Wandering minds

Is a wandering mind a good thing or a bad thing? It depends.

When our minds wandered when we were in school it was a bad thing, or at least it seemed that way. That moment seemed to be when your teacher was most likely to ask you a question. When our minds wander at work, we could lose some time, lose a customer or even, as in my father's case, lose a finger.

I know when my mind is wandering in church because that is when I am most likely to start yawning. Yet sometimes during a sermon my mind turns to a sermon I might preach on that same topic, and because I do sometimes preach sermons, this is perhaps not all bad.

The worst time for mind-wandering, it seems to me, is when one is trying to sleep. Sometimes I awaken at 3 a.m. and cannot get back to sleep because my mind will not relax. It floats from one topic to another — things I've done, things I need to do and fantasies about things I wish would happen. Yet sometimes during these wanderings I think of something I need to do but would have otherwise probably forgotten. So even here, a wandering mind can sometimes be beneficial.

As a part-time writer, I find a wandering mind vital to what I do. So many of my best ideas come unbidden, while my mind is straying from one topic to another. Great thoughts come to me while driving or while taking a shower when I didn't even realize I was thinking about what those ideas pertained to.

I suspect that many of the best inventions, most original business ideas, best lines of poetry, best novel plots, etc., have been the result of a wandering mind.