Mind Wandering by Choice

Pairs of words have thrilled me for decades.  Wildly instructive, good pairs have the power to enlighten, or change habit.  Now, this moment, what pair of words pop as having done this for you?
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Example you ask?  Amusement vs. stewardship.
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Recently, oddly, this pair, want vs. need.
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Culture rewards going after what  we want, what we need, not so much.  In the want vs. need, yesterday, all I could think is the majority of residential landscapes.  Something affordable, easy to take care of, mostly just keep the status quo from the builder or previous owner, enough to keep the HOA from sending nasty grams.  The thinking is not contrived, it is, indeed a no brainer.  Excepting what we need is in the landscape.  Wanting to meet our landscape with a minimum threshold pleases others, seemingly ourselves, while oceans of life we need, flow silently from grasp.
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Miss Katherine Kirkwood Scott's maxim, heard & understood from the source herself, in childhood, "I can live without the necessities but I must have the luxuries."    Oh my, a soup, want vs. need.  Excepting I knew her recipe, intuitively, as a little girl.  The adults laughed, I didn't.  I was 'on it'.  Miss Katherine had opened new realms for me.  Something undiminished decades later

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Pic, above, Martha Stewart.
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From New York Magazine, In Praise of Spacing Out, ", by Melissa Dahl,

Todd Kashdan said. “When we’re zoning out, really what this is, is the incubation period of creativity.” This is where ideas you never would’ve consciously connected seem to come together on their own — suddenly, it becomes clear why your best friend seemed distant at dinner last night, or what you should buy your dad for his birthday, for example. “With mindfulness, on the other hand, you are so in the present moment with your consciousness that there’s no room for ideas to collide,” Kashdan said.   
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In the garden, I know, are answers to life questions/challenges/quirks.  In the garden, I can fully zone out, with intention.  Nature, humble, bold, patient, kind; even when the awareness is outside a comfort zone.  Haven't been outside your comfort zone in 6 months?  Hmm.  That's when I know I'm stagnating.
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 Scott Barry Kaufman and Rebecca McMillian, wrote about zoning out in, Frontiers in Psychology:
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"We mind wander, by choice or by accident, because it produces tangible reward when measured against goals and aspirations that are personally meaningful. Having to reread a line of text three times because our attention has drifted away matters very little if that attention shift has allowed us to access a key insight, a precious memory or make sense of a troubling event. Pausing to reflect in the middle of telling a story is inconsequential if that pause allows us to retrieve a distant memory that makes the story more evocative and compelling. Losing a couple of minutes because we drove past our off ramp is a minor inconvenience if the attention lapse allowed us to finally understand why the boss was so upset by something we said in last week’s meeting. Arriving home from the store without the eggs that necessitated the trip is a mere annoyance when weighed against coming to a decision to ask for a raise, leave a job, or go back to school." 
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Every tangible benefit, above, in my garden.  I wanted a garden, it gave me what I needed.
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With spacing out, and epiphanies, Nature provides another delightful factor, losing all concept of time, what a drug, 'moments of eternity', Joseph Campbell names this.
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Who knew the serpent in the garden, now, is the cell phone?  A killer to zoning out.  Occasionally, my phone is forgotten, going into the garden.  What riches those times are.  On the weekend, by choice, I put my phone intentionally in the garden, away from hearing.
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I'm beyond thankful my gardening life began before cell phones.  How would I know there could be more in a garden?  Of course if the cell phone does this in a garden, the question becomes, what else is it doing?
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Wants vs needs in the garden, pic, above.  Front porch with rails is the ubiquitous, 'everyone wants rails on their front porch', but the narrative, above, is wildly heavy on needs.  Needs so rich it was worth adding 3' to accommodate family, friends, Nature.    
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara