Once in a village in Gujarat, India’s less-travelled westernmost state that borders with Pakistan, a boy pointed to the flag on my backpack with a puzzled shrug. I knew what he meant: “Where are you from?” In rural India, where about 70 per cent of Indians live, I was repeatedly asked that exact question. I replied, “Australia.” Immediately he mimicked the motions of a kangaroo, and then shrugged again. “Where is a kangaroo?” Or so I thought he meant. I was surprised anyone in a village in Gujarat knew about kangaroos, but I indicated an elephant walking beside a nearby river and said, “There are no kangaroos here, but you do have elephants, and we do not!” He ran off and returned with an adult fluent in English (Gujarati is the first language there). He laughed at my interpretation. That boy wanted me to tell him everything about my life, and given that Indians are notoriously inquisitive, that includes personal and intrusive details. For him, everything is connected – Australia means kangaroos which means me.
Things are not always interchangeable. It is cringe-worthy when people insist to be known as a traveller, not a tourist. It is travel snobbery, probably the same people who regard their life choices as superior. Nevertheless, in my mid-twenties, I was besotted with my model of travelling, probably would still be if I could: happy to get lost; spending a long time in one place; going out of my way to meet other like-minded travellers; long conversations; adventure of the spirit; a perfect book (any book is perfect when travelling). That was my comfort zone as a young traveller.
Today, if approached and asked, “Where are you from?” I don’t know what I would answer. It used to be a simple inquiry about my background: born in Australia from a lower middle-class Jewish family; father; friend; divorced; etcetera. But after my stroke, I am now the one who shrugs, which seems to be an appropriate answer – “I don’t know.”
In India, I loved being different – nationality, ethnicity, religion, language, skin colour, different values – and I appreciated when my first-world beliefs and biases were challenged, the more the better. I put a flag on my backpack to invite all the implicit assumptions that came along with it. A brain injury also carries its own implicit assumptions – sometimes it is easier to get it right in the open straightaway, like a flag on your backpack.
I was never introverted. But since my acquired brain injury, I equate being alone with being safe, whereas I used to look to my closest friends to find safety. This is peculiar because I do not like feeling lonely. I suppose it would be different if I was in an enduring loving relationship, but who knows, I know some in long-term relationships who feel truly lonely after an acquired brain injury.
I always liked the book title from a book I read several times, The Whole Shebang (by Tim Ferris), that explains how scientists see the universe as a whole. Since my stroke, I use that title to explain what it is like to have a traumatic brain injury – distanced from the whole shebang. Whereas previously it was the opposite. I used to make a conscious effort to make connections to the whole shebang. I considered it a worthy philosophy.
In fact, I am distanced from that person, including the somewhat eccentric way he looked at things, and the way he approached his friendships, and his love for learning about loads of different things. And I deliberately use the third person pronoun; perhaps that what it means to be lonely after an acquired brain injury. By and large, I miss that guy a lot, and his crazy enthusiasm for finding connections to the whole shebang.
The Feuerstein Method, and I suppose similar rehab therapies that are also modelled on the theory of brain plasticity, focuses much more on connectedness. In fact, that is the problem with traditional rehabs. Most rehabs seem about logistics, appointments (and always reconfirmation and changing appointments), planning, group dynamics – it is modelled on damage control. It is like being on a tourist group to visit the most popular sights in a packed schedule.
In Professor Feuerstein’s approach, traditional teachers are mediators. Their task is to teach students how to learn, and to encourage students to continue to make further connections by themselves. To repeat, the Feuerstein Method is about learning how to learn – which for me, means making connections.
From the start, the Feuerstein Method addresses my “spatial disability” – that is, difficulties with sense of direction, estimation of size, shape, distance, time, seeing the whole picture. In other words, difficulties with spatial orientation and movements in a three-dimensional world. In from my experience, spatial retraining is not included as part of traditional stroke rehabilitation.
In the Feuerstein Method, we are encouraged to learn how to work out tasks, with no time constraints. By the way, students are never allowed to rotate the page, so we can learn how to find things and ourselves in a three-dimensional world.
I worked out a way to remember which hand was right or left. I cheated. I made a mark on my left wrist, without telling Josie my teacher, and later I realised that was exactly what was intended in the Feuerstein Method. That is, it was not cheating, in fact it was the result of developing a new neural path, to find a different strategy to approach my disability. Then I used the same methodology to make a further connection. I was astonished when I realised that my writing hand was the same as my right hand. I used to say “I am right-handed” in those traditional tests, without considering it was connected to other things.
Beyond the inherent social isolation of a brain injury, spatial disability exaggerates loneliness. Without learning our physical place in the world – our relationship to everything else – we cannot begin to grieve the loss of our former self, the one I miss so much. As I learned early in life, you have to find solid ground before you can fully grieve. From the start, the Feuerstein Method tackled this.
“Where are you from?” Once a shrug would been a Zen answer. Now it is factually correct.