One of my favorite movies is the under-appreciated Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt movie Edge of Tomorrow, in which Cruise has to relive a disastrous battle hundreds of times— but thanks to Emily Blunt, is able to survive a little longer each time, and ultimately manages to save the day. (That would be a spoiler alert except even if you haven’t seen the movie you know that’s what’s going to happen.)

It never occurred to me to treat it as a metaphor for mind-wandering, but Paul Bloom did, in an essay in The Atlantic:

You probably aren’t living in the moment. Most people spend their leisure time in imaginary worlds—reading novels, watching television and movies, playing video games and so on. And when there isn’t a book or screen in front of us, our minds wander.

This seems to be the brain’s natural state. Neuroscientists describe the brain regions involved in mind wandering as the “default network,” so-called because it’s usually humming along, shutting down only when something demands conscious attention.

He then brings in the movie:

It takes place in a near future in which the Earth is attacked by aliens. Tom Cruise plays a public relations officer with no combat experience who ends up engaged in battle, and is promptly killed. For reasons too complicated to get into here, he finds himself in a time loop, and is reborn before the battle begins, with memories of the events leading up to his death. He is able to learn from his past experience, and so he fights over and over again, getting better each time, until ultimately he defeats the aliens. The movie’s tagline is: Live. Die. Repeat….

The experience of repeated failure is unpleasant, especially if you’re stuck in a time loop. But one can see how it would be an extraordinary power to repeatedly explore one’s options and learn from failure, with no real permanent consequences.

And this is what we do with our imagination. We use simulated worlds to prepare for the real one.

In other words, unlike distraction (which often seems similar), mind-wandering allows us to safely explore future scenarios, including unpleasant ones, and think out potential solutions or ways of avoiding them.

Anyway, Bloom’s is a nicely-done piece, and a good introduction for those who aren’t familiar with this particular advantage of mind-wandering.