The metaphysical brain looks like Matera

Two older Jewish women have just returned from 2 weeks at a resort in the Catskills.

"Wasn't the food terrible," one of them says.

"Yes, and the portions were so small," says the other.

It's not just a Jewish joke, it's a human nature joke.

Yesterday my brother said my aunt, 93 and in a Christian Science home, had an acute inability to face "facts." Fact--that she cannot walk. Fact--she forgets things. Facts--she doesn't do her laundry, she doesn't eat well, she doesn't take part in many of the activities offered in the home when she claims she does do all of these things and more. My brother thinks her 'metaphysical brain'--the one that 'translates things into thoughts'as the situation's stated --had taken over and that the 'facts' as he put it were either altered, transmuted, or simply ignored in her Christian Science consciousness. My brother's clear insistence on fact makes a lot of sense to me, vis-a-vis our aunt.

Having spent time recently in a Catholic country, I see her situation a little differently; I think my aunt's in the strange place where pride interferes with reality and stops one's life from happening. Her pride is the metaphysical position she's taken, and any fall from it is not only a shame, it either never happened or happened only in the way that God allows. And since God is good, the only thing that can happen is good whether what happens is good or bad, even if what happens is one of the 'facts' my brother spoke about. I'd like to see her enjoy her time, be happy, play bridge, eat well in the dining room, make new friends, but it seems impossible for one whose brain has developed along certain lines for so many years to accept the facts and accomodate her life to them. She sees the world and herself a certain way, and that's that.