Pink is the New Black

I am really enjoying Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. Maybe because it's something that I would read in my free time. It addresses some of the same issues as Friedman's book, but for some reason it doesn't scare the crap out of me like Friedman is apt to do. I don't know, it's not as dark or something. Pink makes all of these changes seem more manageable than Friedman, which diminishes its "doomsday" quality. I love the way he breaks down the right and left halves of the brain and how each contributes its particular "expertise," if you will, to the cognitive task at hand. When he talked about someone whose right hemisphere is damaged and so they have to rely more heavily on their left side, this immediately made me think about my nephew Zach and his Asperger's Syndrome. He takes everything literally and has a hard time understanding figurative language because it just doesn't make sense to him. And he is so detail oriented that he notices and remembers the most minute detail of every single thing he sees. He could probably tell you the color and style of shoes that someone who walked past him in the mall last week was wearing. It made me wonder if people with Autism and Asperger's use the left side of their brains more or have some problem with the right sides of their brains.

I also love the way Pink uses humor in his book. I laughed so hard when he talked about the designer toilet brush because the last time I had to buy a toilet brush for my new apartment, I literally stood in front of the selection of toilet brushes for about 20 minutes trying to decide which one to get. And there's this little voice inside me screaming, "It's a toilet brush! Something to clean your GD toilet with!! Just pick one!" But there are just too many choices, and of course I must get the right toilet brush, what if I get it home and realize that I should have gotten another one? And it's exactly the same scenario with every little mundane thing that I buy. Seriously, it takes me forever to pick out everything--a stapler, a binder, a wastebasket, a blender. Whatever it is, there will be fifteen different ones to choose from in various colors, styles, and features, and I will stand in the aisle forever trying to weigh the pros and cons of each and feeling utterly ridiculous. Because what difference does it make in the end? As long as it's not some cheap piece of crap that's going to fall apart the next day (which the "designer" broom that I purchased from target actually was and I now detest it and wish that I had bought one of the twenty-five other designer brooms available), everything functions in much the same way. Life is too short to spend it standing in the aisle of target trying to decide which shower organizer would look best in your bathroom. Yet, somehow I can't stop myself. Is this what the modern world has come to?