I had an idea the other day. It popped up from the place all new ideas pop from — nowhere. For billions of years there was no idea, and then the idea came into its little non-thing existence, and then ... and then it was gone, blipped back into the darkness like some kind of muon from the great beyond.

It was a great idea. I sensed its grandness in its microseconds of glory. But I remember nothing else about it, not even a little. I have a lingering image of a Flexible Flyer but also of a caloric comparison of one bowl of cookie dough ice cream and three bales of Shredded Wheat. It might have had something to do with literacy in Kenya.

Whatever it was, it would have solved a big chunk of civilization’s problems. But just like that … pffft … it’s gone.

I mourn the loss. A good idea is more precious than a diamond. (Never mind the bad ideas. I’ve had plenty of them, too.)

Psychologists and philosophers have long looked for the source of ideas. Best they can figure is that ideas come from somewhere in the head, but no one knows how they get in there. For all anybody really knows, they’re from the elbow.

Abraham Loeb, chair of the astronomy department at Harvard, wrote in Scientific American, “Ideas originate from pregnant minds, just as babies emerge from the bellies of their mothers.”

He then went on to ask, “What makes a mind fertile?”

His brief answer: “The freedom to venture without the confines of traditional thinking or the burden of practical concerns.”

That said, Loeb lists a few contraceptives that can help prevent the birth of an idea.

One is to have the free drift of thoughts interrupted. Another is to be immersed in the trivia of common wisdom. Another is to live in an echo chamber of ideas similar to your own. Another is the readiness of others to declare an idea stupid because it hasn’t been pre-approved.

Culture (traditional thinking) and economics (practical concerns) do what they can to suppress ideas, but ideas happen nonetheless. Culture may be the baggage of the past, but it’s baggage that’s ready to hop on a train to someplace new.

Likewise, practical concerns, such as feeding oneself, may burden the mind with toil, chores, and the necessary. But necessity gives birth to innovation.

In other words, civilization never stands still for long and is always in conflict between the tried-and-true and the daring-and-new. Defenders of the former deny the failures of the past while fearing the probable failures of new ideas. Defenders of the latter are too young, dumb, or optimistic to know that the truly innovative will indeed probably fail.

But sometimes it doesn’t. Despite the alarms of conservatives, the deafening echoes of antiquated certainties, and the dazzling distractions of the latest gewgaws, an idea sprouts and takes root in a fertile mind.

My ideas come along when I can least do anything with them. In the shower.

Driving a car. Listening to crickets in the dark. Listening to peepers at a party. All of a sudden a mental bell goes “Ding!” A light comes on. A pathway through the 21st century is illuminated with the clarity of the perfectly obvious. Eureka! I found it!

And then, for lack of a pencil, I lose it.

I know what you’re thinking: carry a pencil, stupid. But I know from experience that a pencil in the pocket somehow wards off ideas.

There’s something to be said for boredom — those increasingly rare moments when we’re free from screens, entertainment, conversation, or the need to focus — those precious, spaced-out moments when you’re not even seeing what’s right in front of you.

Your mind wanders through a foggy, pathless forest until an idea steps out from behind a tree like a little leprechaun with a twinkle in his eye.

And then you think: Are all leprechauns male? And how come you never see two of them together? Are they anti-social or do they just not trust each other?

Do they hanker for a pal? Maybe they need a place where they can get together for a drink … a bar for lonely leprechauns! Now there’s an idea…

Glenn Alan Cheney is a writer, translator, and managing editor of New London Librarium. he can be reached at glenn@NLLibrarium.com.