Home

I am reading a fantastic book, Peak Mind, by Amishi P. Jha, recommended to me by my colleague and Upper School teacher, Stuart Lindberg. I cannot stop talking about it to anyone who will listen. Jha takes readers through the research on how attention works, but for the sake of space, I want to share just one idea: mental time travel.

Mental time travel happens when our minds leave the present to revisit something that happened or anticipate something that might. It can be useful. We need to remember, plan, and imagine. But sometimes our attention travels without our noticing, and we miss what is happening right in front of us.

Let me tell you what many of my drives home from work look like. I get my kids in the car and shift into autopilot. I am watching the road while replaying something that happened at work and thinking through what I still need to finish. Then I hear a child talking in the background, and my thoughts jump to dinner, who needs to be where, and what I can pack for lunch tomorrow. Somewhere between the road and all that mental time travel, I miss much of what my kids are telling me.

Fast forward to bedtime. I am doing my due diligence as a mom, calling out the checklist for tomorrow: Lunch box in the sink? Check. Water bottle? Check. No homework, right?

“Well, I have reading. And math.”

What?! It’s bedtime. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?

“I did. In the car.”

And there it is. Someone usually ends up in tears, and it is not always my child.

The next morning, my child is mentally traveling ahead to school, imagining what her teacher will say about unfinished homework. She is tired because she had trouble falling asleep with that worry. She barely touches breakfast and still needs to brush her teeth. Meanwhile, my mind is already at work, running through everything waiting for me there. I try to keep my frustration in check, but she can see it. I can see that she is worried. Although we are standing in the same room, neither of us is really with the other.

Jha’s invitation is to notice when our attention has wandered and gently bring it back. The goal is not to stop thinking about yesterday or planning for tomorrow. It is to have more say in when we do those things, and to notice when the person in front of us needs us here.

Taylor Swift gets at this in her new song “Babylon.” She sings about a person so caught up in the past that he cannot see the family and the life waiting for him at home. One line has stayed with me: “The self-harm of never being where you are.” The song’s story is more dramatic than my missed conversation in the car, but that line made me pause. How often am I physically with my children while my attention is somewhere else? How many ordinary moments do I miss because I am already replaying the day or racing ahead to the next one?

My child was talking to me in the car. I may have missed something funny, something difficult, or something she had been waiting all day to tell me. I cannot get that conversation back. But tomorrow, when she starts a new one, I can be there to hear it.

This weekend, I invite you to notice where your mind goes. When it travels away, try to come back to where you are—and to the people who are there with you. I will be practicing, too.