What’s your RP? That is the prime question as we get ready for Advent. In other words: “Are you ready?”

RP is the abbreviation for “Readiness Potential,” a term in cognitive science which technically stands for your brain’s potential readiness which precedes volitional action, the brain signal linked to voluntary movement, your awareness or readiness that occurs before conscious intention. Sounds complicated. But it’s actually not. It simply means that humans have a kind of preparation or expectation that occurs in our minds, our brains, before we jump in to do something or even think something. Kind of like “free will,” our brains decide we have the potential do something before we actually do it.

Your readiness potential is the sense of readiness you have in your mind even before you’r…