I drifted off in a meeting today, undoubtedly with that vacant look on my face, the hallmark of boredom, or so I've thought. I came back to reality feeling a little sheepish, trying to decide whether my mouth was hanging open, and immediately began to criticize myself for not being able to engage the material. Each time I drift off now I try and trace my distraction to its root. And each time, I find that I veered off shortly after hearing something interesting. Thought provoking, in fact.

I recently heard that our brain sleeps a lot during the day. I knew that while we slept our brain went through cycles, but I did not know that those cycles continue through the waking hours. I notice these slips in and out of consciousness when I am reading and go a few pages before realizing I have no idea what I've read, or pulling into the driveway and having no recollection of the journey, or sitting in a meeting and realizing I am thinking about rabbits instead of progress reports. While our bodies continue to function unconsciously, we lose conscious thought.

As we are able to look at the functioning brain in new and exciting ways, neuroscience is teaching us that sleep plays a function in processing information. We cannot remember what we have learned the day before without sufficient sleep the proceeding night. I read a study before that suggested that dreams are survival tactics - dogs run in dreams because they are learning how to survive the challenges of their day. Humans dream they are naked so they know how to get out of church when that happens. I don't know. The ideas connect in my mind - daydreams are opportunities throughout the day to process what we are learning.

So there I am, sitting in a four hour meeting, paying attention with the best of them, learning good things, when suddenly I have drifted off into some fantasy. I am ok with that. Children use play as a way of making sense of their world. It stimulates their brain and creates the necessary synopsis to grow and develop. I think play time is just as crucial for adults. We need play to make sense of our experiences. We drift into fantasies of saying something brilliant or chewing someone out or running away to Thailand, or bunnies, and something about the process and the white noise and turning off conscious thought and control helps us incorporate what we have been learning.

What I really want is to not take myself so seriously. Learning takes humility. It takes letting go. Maybe it takes a jaw ajar during a meeting. I want to have grace with myself. At my best, I am an untamable mystery.