Cebu Island Stay Journal: Enjoying a Second Life! How to Activate Your Brain by Learning from Sea Squirts

Inspired by the 'Vox Populi, Vox Dei' column in the July 25, 2024, morning edition of the Asahi Shimbun, I will write about how to enjoy a second life without letting your brain degenerate.

Content of the 'Vox Populi, Vox Dei' column

・Sea squirts use their brains to find a home when they are larvae.
・Once a sea squirt finds a place, it decides not to move.
・Since it no longer needs a brain, the sea squirt eats its own brain as a source of nutrients.
・This is the strategy chosen by the sea squirt.
・Among invertebrates, sea squirts are biologically close to humans.

That is the content.

The Human Body and Brain

After growing to a certain age, the human body begins to degenerate. It does not grow further or recover; it unilaterally degenerates and ages. This is something many people know, or perhaps realize through interacting with elderly people.

I often hear that the human brain never stops growing. I worked for a pharmaceutical company and frequently met with doctors. Many doctors, even those who were quite elderly, were clear-headed and spoke logically. I even met several people whose minds became even sharper as they aged.

Perhaps this is because, as a profession, doctors collect and understand a vast amount of data every day, examine many patients, and seriously engage with diagnosis and treatment.

It seems their brains continue to grow regardless of age precisely because they are running at full capacity every day.

The brain degenerates if you don't use it

If you don't use the human brain, it degenerates. People who take early retirement or finish their careers as active employees after the age of 60 and do nothing often describe it as 'feeling like my brain is rotting.'

In fact, when I took early retirement, I intentionally created a blank period to rest my brain, which had been running at full speed, but after a while, I felt an unsettling sensation that my mind wasn't working.

Since it wasn't a comfortable state, I started practicing using my brain again, and I felt like I had regained myself.

<The story of the sea squirt>
Sea squirts are neither shellfish nor fish, and biologically, they seem to be organisms close to humans. These sea squirts use the brains they were born with to find a stable home. Once that purpose is fulfilled, they decide not to move. By doing so, they no longer use their brains at all. Therefore, they eat their own brains to survive. Naturally, the brain degenerates.

What happens if a human doesn't move?

Reading the 'Vox Populi, Vox Dei' column, if sea squirts and humans are biologically close, it became a bit frightening to associate that with people who retire and stop moving entirely, wondering if they are eating their own brains.

I might have eaten a little bit of my own brain when I started my second life.

I don't think the brain I ate will ever come back, so I am currently managing to live by running my remaining brain at full capacity.

I think many people realize that their brain function starts to decline after the age of 50, and around the age of 60. Why not read this 'Vox Populi, Vox Dei' column and think about how you use your own brain?

How to utilize note

When I was a company employee before retirement, I handled a surprising amount of multitasking and used my brain from morning until night. Currently, I am putting my brain to use through thought experiments and writing on note.

The many business skills I acquired during my career, such as logical thinking, critical thinking, and comprehensive ways of looking at things, are very useful for writing my Mako-san note.

After working my brain hard, I get hungry. This happened frequently when I was working, but even now that I have started my second life, I scribble a lot of handwritten notes in my notebook. My stomach gets hungry as I jot down my thoughts while drawing pictures or summarizing them in charts. It is a very pleasant kind of hunger.

Let's try not to stay in the same place

Since I feel like I might end up eating my own brain if I keep sitting in the same place without moving, I intend to keep moving to various places, meeting various people, thinking about various things, and continuing to grow my brain more and more.

I am currently staying in Cebu, Philippines.
I praise my own actions, thinking that visiting Cebu several times a year and being stimulated by new encounters must be good for the brain.

Many friends are scheduled to join me in Cebu this time, starting next week. Some are departing from Narita, some from Kansai International Airport, and their departure and return dates vary, as do their accommodations, which are sometimes shared and sometimes separate.

Although the general schedule is set, the fact that several people are joining just on the call of 'Let's meet in Cebu' gives me nothing but the feeling that this will be a wonderful trip. I am excited.

Generally, it might look like I am just goofing off, but for me, I consider this a brain activation activity.

I will act on the desire to remain a human who keeps moving and keeps the brain active, so as not to become a sea squirt.