The Art of Reinvention

One of my favorite activities is to browse the discount books when I go into a bookstore.  I will admit there are far fewer bookstores to choose from as behemoths like Amazon and the remaining large chain bookstores have eliminated many of the familiar hometown bookstores.  However, one of the advantages of these chain stores is the ability to place excellent, but overlooked books on sale at greatly discounted prices.  On occasion, I find books I would have paid full price for because they are so truly valuable.  Reinventing Yourself by Mario Alonso Puig is one such book. 
I cannot recall how many times friends, counselors, priests, and others reminded me that my divorce provided me with an opportunity to hit the reset button and reassess my life.  I suppose this idea was in the back of my head when I left the town I had lived for over 20 years after my divorce and sought a new life in the city where I worked.  In addition to the tremendous difference in my former 50 mile commute to a five block trip, moving to a new city did allow me a chance to heal and grow in relative anonymity. 
One of the areas where I reinvented myself was in the area of cooking.  Prior to my divorce, I could cook, but the majority of my culinary skills would qualify as bachelor cooking.  I knew I would not starve, but with the exception of Mexican foods I learned to cook from my mother, I could not go much beyond the burgers, scrambled eggs, pasta domain.  Four years later, I am a much better and more confident cook, who is often asked by my daughter to make dishes.  Nothing has given me more satisfaction than her willingness to ask me to make pretty much any dish and telling me how good a cook I am.
Dr. Mario Puig would likely approve of my culinary skills, but Puig has more ambitious plans for his readers. Puig is a physician and surgeon at Harvard Medical School and he brings his scientific knowledge to bear on this topic of reinvention. However, Puig is not a proponent of "scientism", the chauvinistic belief that science is the final arbiter of all matters in life. In fact, Puig has a welcome ecumenical nature in his approach to this topic with chapter titles like "The doors of perception" and "The dark night of the soul" that suggest there is a world beyond the scientific one.  In 19 short chapters, Puig provides compelling evidence, scientific and otherwise that we not only can, but should reinvent ourselves. 
The quote at the beginning of the "Introduction" is from Carl Jung reminding readers that there is a world buried beneath the world of reason.  Puig proceeds to argue that to change ourselves, we have to change our minds.  He writes, “If we wish to increase our capacity to solve problems  and become more competent when looking for opportunities, we need to learn how to transcend the limits that our mind has set us.”  Puig bolsters his argument by noting the first Noble Prize Winner for Medicine, Dr. Santiago Ramon y Cajal claimed all of us had the ability to sculpt our own brain.  Throughout the book, Dr. Puig combines scientific evidence with spiritual insights to demonstrate how we all have the power of reinvention. 
Puig advocates self-examination so we can uncover mental assumptions and barriers which would impede our progress.  We literally need to become more familiar with our consciousness and root out the unconscious roadblocks to our progress. Puig spends time explaining brain architecture and how such knowledge can help us to attempt to use both hemispheres of our brain and not simply rely on reason.
Puig takes this analogy further with a metaphor that explains how the conscious and subconscious part of our mind works. "Our conscious mind can be compared to the captain of a sailing boat, and our subconscious mind to the wind that fills the sails. Even if it is hard for him to admit it, the captain has to learn how the wind works (and to use it in his favour), or he won't get anywhere with his boat."
Dr. Puig firmly believes in the extraordinary power and capacity of our brains and minds, which we must understand like the captain on his boat.  He exhorts us to be vigilant in being attentive or what today we might call "mindful" and to do our best to realize the power of our words and our thoughts.
In his chapter titled "From Darkness to Light", Dr. Puig introduces a five step process to help us move beyond automatic emotional responses to certain situations.  In some ways, it reminds me of Buddhist practice, but regardless of its origins, these processes would allow us to raise our minds and consciousness to another level.  Puig also provides some activities and practices we should follow daily to establish and mental good mental and spiritual health.  He writes, "If we wish to feel more energy and vitality, we need to bear in mind all our dimensions: the cognitive, affective, corporal and spiritual as they are all inter-connected."
In the final chapter of the book, Dr. Puig speaks of twelve dimensions of being and experiencing the world.  Once again, he makes reference to Buddha explicitly, but also to Jesus of Nazareth as an exemplar of these twelve dimensions.  Here Puig is far from the hallowed scientific halls of Harvard Medical School.  I admit I am not fully convinced of the accessibility of these dimensions, but it is provocative and if one could dwell in the twelfth dimension, life would be quite good.
After reading, Dr. Mario Puig's book, I felt inspired and hopeful that true and fundamental change was indeed possible.  It encouraged me to buy a used piano and to learn the basics on this instrument. It further inspired me to make the decision to return to school to obtain my MFA in Creative Nonfiction, a program of study I will begin in the fall of 2018.  At 51 years of age, I realize that there is no time like the present to live more fully and purposefully.  I am grateful to Dr. Puig for sharing his wisdom and optimism with his readers.