Mind Console

It’s interesting how something can pop into your head at the exact moment that you need it. This happened to me twice that I can think of, though I’m sure it happens more often than that. Both times, it was the most perfectly relevant line from two songs that popped into my head at just the right moment to provide comfort in difficult situations.
First, about one or two years ago, I and someone else were struggling with a difficult situation. At the most difficult and stressful time, Seether began to sing in my head, “We’ll rise above this.” It was just the chorus from "Rise Above This," just the one line, and it was all that I and the other person (whom I told of course) needed to hear. It helped reduce some of the stress, allowing us to, in fact, rise above the struggle.

Just the other day, I was filled with anxiety about something. Kelly Clarkson kindly snag in my brain, “I wish I could say to you, ‘It’s gonna be all right”” from “Save You.” Again, it was just the one line, and it was just what I needed to hear. I felt comforted, knowing that it would be all right, and the anxiety dissipated.

It seems the comfort the music and lyrics provide is far more profound when the music pops into your head subconsciously than it does when one consciously invokes the music. It is as if the brain knows what it needs and conjures it, but if one has to think of something comforting, then perhaps it isn’t what the brain truly needed. That is not to say that thinking of something soothing won’t comfort a person, but it is to say that there might be a stronger effect when it happens spontaneously or without conscious effort or thought. Perhaps it is the surprise of the perfect fit of the lyrics to the situation that happens without any effort, and perhaps the effect is the same as it would be if one happened to hear the song or the lyric on the radio at just the right moment. Perhaps it is simply the recognition that something perfect happened as if by coincidence, and therefore, as if by magic.

The brain is truly amazing. Along with all the other amazing things it does, it generates memories of consoling lyrics from songs that it knows, at the moment when it needs the comfort that the words provide. The brain is truly awesome, as well as like totally awesome.