Imagine being pushed and shoved around, but never knowing by who or what. It's almost as if there is a force even more powerful than gods which has taken over our bodies and infected our minds with itself. We succumb to every one of its bidding, yet it feels as if we do it voluntarily. It is in us. We are not in control of it, but it is in control of us. It is an invisible hand pulling invisible strings attached to every one of our limbs, our brain, our mind, and our consciousness. It is the unconscious mind, guided by order and chaos, which is the underlying force which controls a being. We can see from Lewis Thomas’ “Crickets, Bats, Cats & Chaos” that Thomas questions the thought processes of other inhabitants on Earth as well as the thoughts of humans. 	
	One particular event which brings light to this idea of this unconscious mind is a time when I was writing a paper in NYU’s Dibner library and I hit a wall, where I did not have any ideas to write about. 
I tried to do exactly this by clearing my mind and thinking only of my assignment. But this backfired. The more I tried to escape from thoughts unrelated to my assignment, the more I thought about them. It was like quicksand, where the harder you struggled to distance yourself from these thoughts, the more and more you get sucked in. This was when I gave up. Rather than continue trying, I began to listen to music, from Taylor Swift songs to Maroon 5 and Korean pop music. It was at his moment when ideas flowed through my mind, and allowed me to finish my paper. Why did this happen? I believe it was my unconscious mind at work. Rather than hearing the music, I was seeing the ideas of what I wanted to express. It felt as if I was under the influences of synesthesia, where a certain audio stimulus would allow me to see images and vice versa. But instead of seeing images, I saw ideas with my "mind's eye." The ideas came in a broken form. I saw bunches of key words which sparked the creation of my ideas.
Why is it that we have these moments where, without thinking, an answer appears before us? Thomas might have an answer for that in his “Crickets, Bats, Cats & Chaos.” 
In essence, these random moments which we have are normal, yet it is these random moments where unthinkable ideas emerge. Tasks such as searching your mind for specific ideas do not happen very easily when you are doing it consciously. However, these ideas, very much like dreams, which we all enjoy, occur unconsciously. The randomness and spontaneity of these unconscious moments seem to occur easily to our minds, but it is a fact that we cannot will these moments. 
 Alan Lightman is a novelist and a scientist who believes creativity, or art, should be a crucial factor in science. In his "The Art of Science", Lightman portrays his own creative moments, very similar to my own, of the invisible hand at work. His first creative moment as a scientist occurred as he was working on a project, where he had hit a wall for months. Lightman had been trying to figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it. However, these answers were not solved consciously. In fact, he figured out what went wrong unconsciously. He woke up on a Sunday morning and lit up like a light bulb, and suddenly knew all the problems of his project, and how to fix it and move forward. I believe the invisible hand pulled some strings to have Lightman dream of a solution to his months of suffering. The unconscious mind does not blatantly give answers, but rather it gives tiny sparks of  ideas, key words, or a little push in the right direction to allow one to light up like a lightbulb.
