A mind really can wrack a body.
You know, you get to thinking about something—wrapping your whole mind around it—and the next thing you know you’re kneading your brow in anxiety. Or tamping down unrealistic hopes after you veered off into a daydream. Darned mind.
Just before sleep is a particularly dangerous time. There you are in the privacy of your bedroom where you’ve undressed your ego, laid bare your pretensions, confessed your inadequacies, and assumed a supine position. It’s the most vulnerable moment of the day.
Norman Vincent Peale offered a defense against such peril. The 20th-century Christian preacher wrote a best-seller in 1952 called The Power of Positive Thinking, a self-help book that straddled spirituality and psychiatry and alienated both communities.
At the front of the book, Peale wrote, “This is written to suggest techniques and to give examples which demonstrate that you do not need to be defeated by anything, that you can have peace of mind, improved health, and a never-ceasing flow of energy. In short, that your life can be full of joy and satisfaction.”
In chapter nine—How to Break the Worry Habit—he posited a solution for mental overload: “Practice emptying the mind daily.” Flush the mind! Why didn’t I think of that?
Peale explained in some detail how to drain the brain three times a day, each cleansing accompanied by the declaration, “With God’s help, I am now emptying my mind of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of insecurity.” The preacher then counseled refilling the emptied mind with thoughts of faith, hope, courage, and so on.
Let me say, I do not doubt the efficacy of divine intervention. Many, many people have had transformative experiences “with God’s help.” But the brain doesn’t function like a bladder. There’s no spigot at the base of it to produce relief akin to a bathroom visit. I’m sorry, but the brain-drain idea comes across to me as a 1950s con.
I’m more impressed with a guy named Frederick D. Patterson. While he didn’t offer a formula for mental relief, he did capture the essence of the treasure you and I have between our ears.
Patterson was a microbiologist, which perhaps interests only fellow scientists. Of more general note, he was president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. If his credentials as an educator still don’t impress you, perhaps the following will pull you over the threshold into his fan club: Patterson founded the United Negro College Fund and crafted its iconic motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Indeed it is. Even without drain spigots, our brains are simply wonderful. They have an amazing capacity, which is why it’s sad to see so many minds wasted. Wasted how? Tickled and tortured by drugs. Degraded and benumbed by coarse content. Enfeebled by pernicious obsessions. Starved for imagination.
If a mind dump were possible, our society could use a gigantic one in hope of regaining its soul.