A Brain Can Atrophy as Fast as a Body

 An idle mind is the coroner's workshop, if you don't mind me saying so. A brain can atrophy as fast as a body. Muscles body or muscles brain, they both exist, so exercising the brain is as important as exercising the body.
   This is not a new thought, of course. And, a corollary has always been that television is the wasteland that wastes the mind. Careful there, though. That which stimulates is that which exercises. TV is sometimes a stimulant, and sometimes not. Sometimes you laugh and laugh at the creativity. Other times, you are nonplused. Sometimes TV inspires us to be creative, ourselves, and sometimes it provides nothing but a story that requires no thought or reflection of our own -- no real thinking, for the TV is doing it all for us. Laughing can be good when ist is a stimulant, but not when it just lets us disengage from our own thinking.
    I wonder at our rehabilitation centers. Too often, patients do little other than watch TV. Their life in their old age becomes as their life in their young age. Just as we often sit our kids out of our way by sitting them in front of the TV, so it is with residents in a care center. 
   Not that care centers do not provide some things for residents to do. Bingo and book readings come to mind. And, there are concerts and such. One of the best activities is physical therapy.  I just think rehab centers could expand on their offerings. Woodwork and origami, chess and coin collecting. Teach, teach, teach; let them learn foreign languages and let them learn astronomy.
   An education is not just for the young; it is for those who would to remain young.