Awareness: Lesson from the Flow cytometer

 The ongoing pandemic has irreversibly changed many aspects of our lives. Still, recently I stumbled upon a new discovery, a new life lesson when I was studying Covid-19 immunological protection data from an instrument called Flowcytometer for vaccine studies. As a lifelong student of life, I gained an insight that I could never manage for the last twenty years of my professional life. Earlier, I found the instrument a little complex and too scientific. I could have never imagined that it would teach me something besides science one day. A life lesson.

The flow cytometer is a versatile instrument used for the immunological analysis of any cancer, infectious, or genetically abnormal cells.

Basically, cells are tagged/colored with a fluorescent dye and made to pass through a laser beam. The cells are then analyzed based on their size and quality and on an attached computer system.

Before all this, blood samples have to be processed to be analyzed by laser beams. However much care is taken, no samples can be absolutely free of debris. As a result, debris is also acquired along with the cells of interest. But the flow cytometer doesn't have brains, so it acquires everything, cells of interest as well as debris. Now when we analyze the samples on the computer, we do have an option to get rid of debris/ noise in electronic language. This means the system gives you the option to cut out the noise by excluding the debris from the analysis. This is achieved by increasing a parameter called the THRESHOLD. Well, you can analyze the debris as well, but it would only increase the file size, which might result in more complicated and chaotic data that need to be analyzed.

Now imagine this happening in our lives. There is so much information available out there in the world today. This is especially multiplied a million times by non-stop media and internet access. We are practically bombarded with non-stop information of all kinds. This is, in a way, very good, but the flip side is the unnecessary negativity. We all have gone through judgment, criticism, likes, and dislikes, all of which are like debris. Sometimes, it's not easy to overcome some very personal comments or questions. Somehow we seem to have lost the sensitivity over time. We are still mature and able to handle all this most of the time, but our children don't precisely understand how much it affects their lives and how to handle unwelcome stress.

It struck me like an iron fist while analyzing my data the other day that we can also use the THRESHOLD in dealing with the debris in our lives. Like Flowcytometry, we can always increase our threshold and choose to reduce the background noise by being AWARE of what we encounter. That way, our minds will encounter less debris, and we will have fewer files ( information/negativity, unnecessary feedback, and judgment) to process. And we would be able to subtract the unnecessary negativity from our lives. Like Flowcytometry, we can choose to analyze the debris as well, but that would make our lives much more complicated and heavy. This insight is subtle, but it can make our lives simpler and more beautiful.