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Pay attention!

So, I've hurt myself and I have a sick kid. Both of these things have led to a small (but maybe significant?) learning about attention and significance.

One of the things that crops up again and again in the reading and watching I've been doing for The Significance Project can be summarized as the concept of being in the moment. Half a year ago I would have scoffed at that phrase as something trite and written it off as un-evidenced nonsense. But something twigged in me recently and I've come to think about the idea of being in the moment as a combination of actions, one of which has to do with where I place my attention.


Look at this photo of me and my son. It might not seem like it, but he's really quite sick today, so I kept him home from school. Typically when this happens I am busy elsewhere and unless it's critical he fends for himself. Today, since I've been thinking about attention a lot, I made a conscious decision to focus my attention on him. I made him home-made tomato soup for lunch. We ate warm bread pudding together. I sat with him to watch the Captain America movie, which is not my favorite, but today it was quite pleasant. The interesting thing, and what strikes me about the photo, is that it looks like he is the one taking care of me. This is revelation #1 for the day: that when I am caring for someone with my full attention, it feels significant--and I feel like the one who is rewarded.


I have also hurt myself. During yoga class last night I took a pose a little too far and today I feel it very keenly in my right shoulder. It feels like it's on fire, actually. The interesting thing is that I have no idea which pose it was that led to this injury. I wasn't paying attention. There in yoga class, where the aim is to be completely in the moment, I was obviously (completely) somewhere else.


Revelation #2 for the day is that where I choose to place my attention matters, especially in terms of how I experience a feeling of significance. I am also aware that I have control over where I place my attention, though that is something that is most often beyond my reach, at least at the current time. I'm working on it in my meditation practice, which I'll get into more detail about later, but the upshot is that this is seriously difficult stuff. I have always thought that I was rather good at maintaining attention, but it turns out that I'm really quite rubbish at it (I know that's not a very self-compassionate sentiment, but I'm a realist). I'll need to do some heavy lifting to sort this one out, but for now I'm going to add attention to my reading list and see what I can find in the psychological research.


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