This is one reason people love dangerous sports like mountain climbing, a situation where you have to be totally focused," Da-
FOCUS
vidson adds. Powerful focus brings a sense of peace, and with it, joy. "But when you come down the mountain, the self-referencing network brings your worries and cares right back."
In Aldous Huxley's utopian novel Island, trained parrots fly over to people at random and chirp, "Here and now, boys, here and now!" That reminder helps the denizens of this idyllic island pop their daydreams and refocus on what's happening in this very place and moment.
A parrot seems an apt choice as messenger: animals live only in the here-and-now.4 A cat hopping into a lap to be stroked, a dog eagerly waiting for you at the door, a horse cocking its head to read your intentions as you approach: all share the same focus on the present.
This capacity to think in ways that are independent of an im mediate stimulus-about what's happened and what might happen in all its possibilities-sets the human mind apart from that of almost every other animal. While many spiritual traditions, like Huxley's parrots, see mind wandering as a source of woe, evolu tionary psychologists see this as a great cognitive leap. Both views have some truth.
In Huxley's vision the eternal now harbors everything we need for fulfillment. Yet the human ability to think about things not happening in that eternal present represents a prerequisite for all the achievements of our species that required planning, imagi nation, or logistic skill. And that's just about everything that's a uniquely human accomplishment.
Mulling things not going on here and now-"situation independent thought" as cognitive scientists call it-demands we decouple the contents of our mind from what our senses perceive at the moment. So far as we know, no other species can make this radical shift from an external focus to an inward one with anything ear the power of the h man mind, or nearly so often.