The efficiencies of the adult mind, useful as they are, blind us to the present moment. We're constantly jumping ahead to the next thing. We approach experience much as an artificial intelligence {AI} program does, with our brains continually translating the data of the present into the terms of the past, reaching back in time for the relevant experience, and then using that to make its best guess as to how to predict and navigate the future. One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful-wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing, to which the adult brain has closed itself. {It's so inefficient!} Alas, most of the time I inhabit a near-future tense, my psychic thermostat set to a low simmer of anticipation and, too often, worry. The good thing is I'm seldom surprised. The bad thing is I'm seldom surprised.
( Michael Pollan )
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