on how to pay attention and what it might mean
this work is made and shared on regular basis based on the practice of generosity and the understanding that when we share our gifts our world is made whole together. it is also made knowing that you dear readers are doing this too. please support and offer to this work as a practice of generosity not just for each piece but for a lifelong practice of crafting and sharing creativity. consider signing up as a paid subscriber knowing that i am working on a way for people to offer the right amount for them.
its not just that the sun is out today but that does help, it has something to do with the curly frost on the shady part of the roof, or maybe the way the fourth grade students wrote poems yesterday about presidents giving everyone passports but something is different today.
the pumpkin patch and corn maze by the freeway has turned into a lake, it is full of migrating birds. yesterday i watched the geese, ducks, and a few seagulls swim in the shallow water and I imagined when this was a lake here. the river valley spread out in a series of marshy ponds.
i don’t know if this time existed or if it just did in my mind but there was some solace there, the kind of solace that comes with the easy time travel our minds do all the time.
is your mind time traveling more than usual these days? is it imagining catastrophic futures? near or far?
mine is.
and so alongside noticing that it travels to every catastrophe imaginable i play with it some and look into the rainstorm and travel to times when all the migrating birds landed here in great clouds. i travel to the parties where people made huge mounds of shells over conversations about the year. i travel with the shock of the moon glowing alongside a splash of stars after many days of storm. and i watch my mind be capable of this kind of attention.
so today i thought i’d write about how to pay attention and what it might mean as we navigate the onslaught of noise. first the noise is real. the need of the noise is real. and in the noise is a demand that we become so overwhelmed that all we can do is collapse under the weight of it hungry for a breath of some other kind of air.
i want to offer the possibility of attention as a thread to follow and experiment with as something to sort the noise. we already have these in our lives, they are not another thing that needs to be acquired. here are a few examples: sensations in the body, the breath, or the noticing of things that come and go (sounds, tastes, etc.)
these phenomena as threads offer us a place to return. here is an example: i misread my complex multi-layered calendar and realize that i have told many people the wrong dates and times and will be spending the morning sorting this out, pause, land in my breath, notice it is short and ragged, i don’t change it, just notice, this is stress in my body, okay noted, i go back to scheduling.
when i do this on a regular enough basis throughout the day (and night) i find myself noticing many moments of calm, joy, and space alongside the inevitable pain, irritation, and stress. i note this as a thread because of a few things. if you like me feel overwhlemed by this moment holding the paradox of the world there is a great pressure to overextend. this overextension doesn’t have the sturdiness or fierceness that is needed. i need (and i imagine you do too) a steady reserve to come from and following a thread like this is one way i do it.
what do you do?