When were you last “feelin’ groovy”?

Or are you movin’ too fast?

“No deeds to do, no promises to keep; I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.”

The 1966 Simon & Garfunkle’s hit song—the 59th Street Bridge Song—keeps popping into my mind lately. I’m not sure why, though I suppose I needed a little reminder to stop. look, and listen to the quiet, a little more.

The “quiet” is actually not quiet. The universe is always on. When we get quiet, there are usually plenty of things going on that we were too often too busy to hear. Our brain needing rest has gotten a good bit of press lately from the cognitive researchers. One of them, Theo Compernolle, wrote BrainChains: Discover Your Brain, to Unleash Its Full Potential in a Hyperconnected, Multitasking World (2014). He has become a friend (he’s Belgian); and I’ve often quoted his rant about the need for our minds to hop out of the squirrel cage and let it refresh itself. He refers to the three aspects of our brain—the forebrain, the limbic brain, and the archive brain. The forebrain is the latest to evolve—it’s the planner, organizer, strategist, future thinker. The limbic brain is the ever-present survivalist—what’s going on right now? Is it good bad, or indifferent? But the archive brain is truly that—it functions as the assimilator, the curator and cataloguer of the thousands of inputs and thoughts we have on any day. It does that best in sleep—and that’s why we need a certain amount of that. Meditation and simple quiet reflection serve that purpose as well.

Clearer priorities, creative ideas, and even a bit of “feelin’ groovy” await us as coming attractions in our cognitive theater. Being quiet is the ticket.