My Mind-blowing Mind

My mind is a very good traveller. It goes for a journey of it’s own regardless of the time, space and place. Sometimes, it may cause embarrassment. Recently, I was on my shift and my colleagues were talking to each other (fortunately, we had an easy shift on that day). As it was not busy, I thought I would check my work emails. After sometime I could hear them call my name. When I looked at them, they asked me, “Where were you? Were you spacing out?” They told me that they had been trying to talk to me since about a minute but I was somewhere else. To be honest, I didn’t hear anything they said to me even though they were just standing a foot away. They were right, physically I was there but my mind was wandering somewhere. Does your mind travels a lot? Does it goes to other places and time that you forget your surroundings?

Personally, I love to travel a lot. I had dreamed about going for a world tour in a cruise ever since I read the story ‘Around the world in 80 days’ during my school days. It would be so much fun to go to different countries, to meet different people and to understand their culture, tradition and lifestyle. Also, I always wonder what if we have a time machine. We can go to different times, both past and future. Anyway, my mind is doing that job instead. Don’t worry, I’m not out of my mind. It doesn’t do that when I’m occupied with my work or with other serious matters. But, when it does, it just goes from one place to another and somehow, I find it relaxing and refreshing.

The incident said above, made me so curious that I did some research on mind travel. While researching, I found out that scientists have given it the name as Mental Time Travel or Chronosthesia. The term was coined by Endel Tulving in 1985, and is defined as the mental capacity of a person to reconstruct personal events from the past and to imagine possible scenarios in the future. He said that it is acquired by humans through evolution and it constantly allows us to be aware of the past and the future. Scientists are still studying on the subject but they are pretty sure that mental time travel affects the decisions we make. Anyway, let them study on the topic, meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy my mind travel.

Mental time-travel is one of the greatest gifts of the mind. It makes us human, and it makes us special.

Claudia Hammond

Not all those who wander are lost.

J.R.R. Tolkien

The farther I travel, the closer I am to myself.

Andrew McCarthy

Only one who wanders finds new paths.

Norwegian proverb

Please leave your comments on the topic as I would really love to read them.