There’s an old anti-drug commercial that’s stuck around forty years past its expiration date for one reason: it never explained anything. A voice says “this is your brain,” holds up an egg. Says “this is your brain on drugs,” cracks it into a hot pan. That’s the entire argument. No stats, no lecture — just watch what happens to the egg.
Something similar happens to you, minus the frying pan, the day you land somewhere you’ve never been before.
This is your brain: reading a group chat you’ve already half-read, driving a route you could do with your eyes shut, saying the same four sentences to the same barista in the same order you say them every morning. None of it requires you to actually be there for it. Your brain figured out years ago that it didn’t need to watch you live most of your Tuesdays, so it stopped.
This is your brain on travel: standing in a terminal, unable to read a single sign, pretty sure you just walked through customs the wrong way, suddenly wide awake for no reason you can point to. Nothing dangerous is happening. Nothing here requires this much attention. Your brain just doesn’t know that yet, so for a few days, it pays attention to everything.
That’s really the whole trick, and it’s less mystical than the marketing around it suggests. Novelty is the one thing a brain can’t run on autopilot, because autopilot only works on situations it’s already solved. Hand it something it hasn’t filed away yet, and it has no choice but to actually show up.
The part almost nobody mentions: it wears off, fast. The version of you that noticed everything on day one is back to scrolling by day four, because the unfamiliar becomes familiar the moment your brain finishes filing it — and it will always finish filing it. That’s the job it’s built for.
Which means the honest use of any of this isn’t collecting more moments like that one in the terminal. It’s noticing, once in a while, what you stopped paying attention to at home, not because it disappeared, but because your brain got efficient enough to stop bothering. The barista, the route, the four sentences. None of it went anywhere. You just stopped noticing, because you didn’t have to.
Any questions?
— Sean, Slow Crossings