The interesting thing about something in the back of your mind

Mark Leyner, with his sharp wit and strange wisdom, once observed: “The interesting thing about something in the back of your mind is that it can travel pretty far back in your mind.” What sounds at first like playfulness is, in truth, a profound reflection on memory, thought, and the hidden chambers of the human spirit. For the back of the mind is no shallow recess—it is a vast, shadowed landscape where ideas, fears, and desires retreat, sometimes to slumber, sometimes to grow in secret, until they return to shape our lives anew.

When Leyner speaks of the back of the mind, he is speaking of what the ancients called the “unseen self”—that mysterious place where forgotten impressions dwell. We believe we have moved past certain thoughts, yet they travel deeper and deeper, far beyond our daily reach. They do not vanish. They remain, stored away, gathering power or patience, waiting for the moment when they will rise again. Just as seeds buried deep in the earth wait for rain and sun, so too do the things in the back of the mind wait for the seasons of our lives to summon them forth.

History and human experience bear witness to this truth. Consider the story of Augustine of Hippo, who in his youth abandoned his mother’s faith and pursued pleasure and philosophy. Yet the prayers and teachings of his mother Monica, though seemingly forgotten, lay in the back of his mind. Years later, in a moment of anguish and clarity, those buried truths surged forth, leading to his great conversion, and with it, writings that shaped centuries. What he thought he had discarded had only traveled far back, waiting to emerge at its destined hour.

So too do the traumas of war or childhood, though buried, remain alive in the mind’s depths. Soldiers who seemed to return in peace often carried the battlefield with them, lodged in the recesses of memory. The ancients knew this as well; the Greeks told of Orestes, haunted by the Furies of his deeds, no matter how far he tried to flee. What we push back does not disappear; it only moves deeper, sometimes to torment, sometimes to transform.

Yet Leyner’s insight is not only a warning, but also a gift. For just as wounds can lie hidden in the mind’s depths, so too can sources of strength and creativity. Ideas half-forgotten, dreams deferred, inspirations once dismissed—these can reawaken after long slumber, richer for the time they spent growing in secret. How often has an artist or inventor said that a solution or vision returned suddenly, after years of lying dormant? What seems buried is not gone—it is simply preparing its time.

The deeper meaning, then, is that the back of the mind is both a vault and a seedbed. We must tend it wisely, for what we allow to sink into its depths may one day return to guide or to wound us. Bitterness buried will resurface as poison; love buried will resurface as longing; wisdom buried will resurface as revelation. The task of the mindful soul is to guard what enters, to heal what is wounded, and to nurture what is noble in the hidden fields of memory.

So, O listener, heed Mark Leyner’s words as more than clever phrasing. Recognize the power of what lies in the back of your mind. Do not think that forgetting means erasure, nor that burying means destroying. Confront what must be faced, heal what must be healed, and remember what must not be lost. For in time, all that is buried returns, whether as ghost or as guardian.

Thus the teaching is clear: the back of the mind is a place of mystery, danger, and possibility. Guard it well, nourish it with truth, beauty, and wisdom, and when its hidden treasures rise again, they will not enslave you, but set you free.