I have tried to be careful lately. Maybe you too.
I thought how The attention was so different from last year that in any other year of my life. The pandemic – its monotony and His disturbance – seemed to be wreaking havoc on my ability to pay attention.
First of all, monotony. Life in locking, for me and perhaps for others, has made it frustrated difficult to be distracted from domestic and daily troubles that I have avoided to address or resolve in the past thirty years. But the sudden pace of a quieter life meant these tensions – frustrations without resolution, unhealthy communication habits, tacit hopes – were more difficult to ignore. To my great dismay, these daily realities did not stop going up … like, every day.
The monotony, the little troubles, the work calls that always starts three minutes late, the creaking of this chair, the only dish that my husband leaves in the sink at the end of the night, the repeated and transactional ways that we spend through the day to “cross” them instead of enjoying, delighting or preventing us – I worked hard to pay attention to all these accustomed realities.
I continued to think of Ernest Hemingway, who said that we must write “hard and clear about what hurts” and wanted to ask a follow -up question: Of course, sir, but how to attend, hard and clear, what bore? Halfway through this last year, I realized that if you look at the monotonous realities long enough, you can go your eyes crossed * – a lesson that we all learned ~ to the hard ~ at the back of the Grahams box in plush in the day. (* Or you could achieve enlightenment; in my case, it was the first.)
Where monotony has narrowed my field of vision, the disruptive nature of the pandemic seemed to zap the ability of my brain to give meaning to everything I looked at.
Which brings me to the second part: disturbance. For all the ways in which my attention has shrunk, more or less, to things to do, she also felt, simultaneously, as I cannot focus on anything at all. Where monotony has narrowed my field of vision, the disruptive nature of the pandemic seemed to zap the ability of my brain to give meaning to everything I looked at. Yes, I always count on Grahams Teddy imaging. Go with it.
The attention of fatigue. The exhaustion of tension on my eyes and my mind to focus so long with fuzzy similarity, trying to glean the meaning of him day after day. Try to take care of things at hand despite the monotony and try to take care of what matters most despite the disturbance.
The friends of my friends in the medical profession (although it may very well be true in other roles) tell me that they have experienced fatigue of attention in an extreme way: such a concentrate participant To the needs of others that when they are ultimately “extinguished”, they collapse, as if they held their breath for the entirety of their quarter work.
Others, many of whom are parents and work at home with little girls and toddlers, to feel that their attention is completely diffuse: never once enough Land on a single object, an idea or one person. Simply throw from an urgent scene to the next, with a mental list perpetually growing things to do when the laundry basket is deposited and the timer triggers and the children fall asleep (and so on).
In addition to simply name these things (in case the joint could help you assess where you or your loved ones are), I want to share something that helped me understand what to do in this fatigue of attention.
I read a test book by Simone Weil, mystical, activist and philosopher of the 20th century, whose writing on attention puts this brief reflection on absolute shame. But who judges. (Me, and maybe also Simone.)
I think of attention as mental faculty which does not only concern cognitive understanding but presence – not just to look at something but Take. And more importantly, than anything I am trying to takeI also try to be taken care of by it.
She writes This “attention, paid in its highest degree, is the same as prayer. It supposes faith and love. Absolutely unixed attention is prayer. If we turn our minds towards good, it is impossible that little, almost the whole soul will not be attracted to itself. ”
You don't need to be the type of prayer to appreciate your point. When I think of Be careful that prayer I think of attention as mental faculty which does not only concern cognitive understanding but presence – not just to look at something but Take. And more importantly, than anything I am trying to takeI also try to be taken care of by it. Is that what does the real goal look like? A kind of in -depth attention to something that, over time, absorbs us more? An activity, a person, a place or an idea that supports our concentration so that we never really end up finding meaning, no matter how long do we watch it?
When I read this Weil test in December, I immediately had a kind of intestinal knowledge of the types of activities that help me Be careful In this totally absorbed way: play and write.
More specifically: playing with my toddler and writing the flow of consciousness, the genre that helps me to treat, name, remember or assess something that rolls in me for a while. Don't get me wrong, it's always completely rare To feel good to pay attention, but when I do it, it's when I do this kind of activities that allow me to take something While I feel that I am, myself, taken by them. I think that must be part of what Simone Weil means by prayer. I think that is why these acts seem sacred to me. I also think that it is starting to give meaning to a part of my fatigue of attention in the past year. I am not sure, for all attempts to pay attention, I took care of the kind of thing that filled me and made me feel present and rooted, rather than perpetually dispersed.
I also think that it is starting to give meaning to a part of my fatigue of attention in the past year. I am not sure, for all attempts to pay attention, I took care of the kind of thing that filled me and made me feel present and rooted, rather than perpetually dispersed.
I would be curious – have you experienced differences in the way, what, and if you have been able to be careful this year? What types of activities help you feel absorbed – and not just to entertain or distract (or productive, elsewhere) – when you assure it? What wisdom do you have to pay attention, whether you are tired or filled?
Ellen likes to read and write and think that the house of the house is a virtue. She has her master's degree in Yale religion and works as editor -in -chief and publisher of a research institute dedicated to understanding the inner and external life of young people. It has a plant, a tattoo, a baby and an identical twin. Unlike all conventional wisdom, it regularly evokes religion and politics at the dinner table.
