Memory. As neuroscience continues to unravel the captivating enigma of our memory, my fascination only deepens with age. The challenge or, more accurately, the puzzle of forgetting is a frustrating reminder of just how intricate our memories are. The continuing deluge of research findings intrigues me almost weekly. Our memories do much more than merely archive the past; they serve as a lens through which we can better understand ourselves as well as others, offering insights that are essential for a meaningful life. Our memories shape every prediction and every decision we make, and influence how we feel about those choices. They weave together the threads of our existence and try to help us envision what might or could be.
Within our minds, countless memories coalesce into narratives that attempt to recall and make sense of forgotten moments. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the brain has a mind of its own. The undisciplined mind in action is what fuels the human condition. It prioritizes what it “thinks” is important while letting us forget what it senses is not. We confidently recall things that never happened – a phenomenon known as confabulation. About one in three people can vividly remember an event that never occurred. This fascinating aspect of our thinking illustrates how our memories compete with one another for supremacy. Efforts to remember inadvertently blend with misinformation from trusted sources that leads us to fabricate memories that are not born from experience but are simply a consequence of trying to remember them.
Our memories occupy a unique space that blurs the line between truth and imagination. They are ongoing reconstructions, merging fragments of our past experiences with our biases, motivations and impressions of the present. This means our memories encompass both what happened and what we think happened. As I learned during my time as a forensic fact-finder, there are at least three sides to every story. Accessing a memory is like pressing “play” and “record” simultaneously. While we often say that perception is reality, it is not. In the intersection of memory and imagination, we craft our model of reality and create our most cherished treasures. This process is continuous, therefore unfinished. And that simply adds to the complexity of being human.
Serendipity. When our minds aren’t engaged in challenging tasks, they often drift. We spend about a third of our waking hours daydreaming – anywhere from 15% to 50% of the time, depending on the activity. This default mode of thinking is when we can be our most creative. While a wandering mind is not daydreaming, it plays a crucial role in our cognitive processes. About 30% of our thoughts sift through unrelated topics, and this increases when we’re involved in mundane, repetitious tasks. In neuroscience, this is referred to as the alpha state of thinking. And it enhances our ability to incubate serendipity and generate novel insights by recombining different components of our knowledge.
The benefits of a wandering mind are significant. It enables us to envision different scenarios of what our future could be, navigate the social complexities of our world, incubate ideas, ponder what we’ve learned, reorganize our memories, mull over and adapt to life’s ever-changing circumstances, or just giving our neural circuitry a much-needed break. The mind can gravitate to pleasant, fanciful thoughts or troubling ruminations. When the mind drifts, it can remind us of the things lost in the shuffle of everyday events, provide an architecture for building clever thoughts or simply entertain us. In this unreasoning state, there is no devil’s advocate, no cynicism or negativity – just a reception of whatever floats into the theatre of our mind and provides a platform for unexpected insights.
Life’s challenges rarely present themselves as well-formulated puzzles or neatly packaged problems. Yet, as Louis Pasteur wisely noted, chance favors the prepared mind. In contemplating a problem, a wandering mind can explore difficult questions and incubate creative answers. Research shows that individuals whose minds have strayed, compared to those focused on a specific task, generate 40% more innovative solutions. Serendipity arrives when we open ourselves to the possibilities that exist beyond our immediate concerns. Our brains store a vast and diverse array of information that provides the grist for and significantly increases the chances of forging breakthrough connections. When teachers urged us to “sit up straight and pay attention,” they were overlooking the primary objective of education – nurturing our creative intelligence.
Our minds harbour a wealth of concepts, images, ideas and data waiting for the right moment to combine in fresh ways. The likelihood of these connections occurring diminishes when we’re overwhelmed by distractions that obscure the important signals amidst all the noise. Almost everything today is just that – noise. The relentless daily barrage of to-do lists, emails, texts and interruptions stifles the mental space that fosters serendipity. If life’s daunting challenges and complexities are weighing you down, don’t begrudge a walk in the woods or just sitting in the sun at the water’s edge. These moments of solitude can ignite your creative thoughts and allow them to float freely in search of new perspectives and directions. Incubate serendipity by embracing relaxation, slowing down and occasionally doing nothing. Your brain may reward you with a cascade of astonishing insights.