Thoughts on the storage unit that is our brain.

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

I happened to be reading random quotes just now and came across this one.  It makes a ton of sense!  I always compared a brain to a library filled with books based on what you read, learn, and experience.  Your ability to help others in any way is directly dependent upon what you store in that library.  If you only fill it with recipes, thoughts from other mommy bloggers, and the conversations you have with your children, then you will be equipped to help other people with recipes and children at the same stage of life and situation as your children.  Is that bad?  Not necessarily, but it means that if you don't take the opportunity to study scripture (not just mindlessly read for five minutes a day), you aren't in a position to spiritually lift or guide others toward Christ.  If you don't learn how to change your own oil, tire, air filter, or car battery, then teaching your daughter these things or stopping on the side of the road to see if you can help someone with a flat tire is beyond your capacity.

I disagree, however, with the point made about the brain's elasticity.  Instead I believe that your mind expands to hold all the new information you choose to store.  Useless thoughts do not replace the useful, but any skill can become rusty if not regularly practiced, and any piece of knowledge can be forgotten if not used in some way.  The goal, then, is to do as he implies: give priority to those things that will enrich your life and the lives of others.  Now, is this what Holmes meant in this novel?  Probably not...like, not at all.  But since I'm taking the quote out its context and musing on the quote as an entity itself, I choose to interpret it as I have already done.

And now it's after midnight and my brain is very, very tired.  This makes the second post in 2014...breaking the pattern of one post per year since this blog's inception.