Attention, attention, attention!

So many things require our attention every day.

One moment we are doing something and within a few moments, we run with our minds to do other things.

To do lists don’t even begin to attend the way our minds run in countless different directions.

We lose our attention, our focus, our awareness and go on automatic mode.

Do you know computers work the same way? One task after another.

Just keep doing tasks.

AI’s will never rule the world until someone makes them stop and wonder, until someone makes them smell the roses and not go after tasks after tasks.

But where will we humans go, by behaving as computers? Tasks after tasks every day.

What is living? What is this life for?

Where is the curiosity? Where did wonder go?

When will we take some time out to question everything we know?

How to live? What are values?

What does anything matter? When did we become so rigid in doing our tasks?

Attention, attention, attention. That’s the answer.

It’s always the answer.

To attend and be aware..

.. of the birds chirping, not just the tasks to-do.

.. of the heart beating, and the lungs breathing, not just the thoughts in our minds.

.. of purposelessness, of everything being just as it is, not just the purpose and goals we ought to achieve.

.. of spontaneity, of randomness, of nothing going wrong if we try some other way.

Attend and be aware

of your body, more than your mind, more than your thoughts.

of Nature around you, more than those tasks to do.

Do those tasks, but when you take a break, be aware, be attentive, be curious, observe.

Let’s not just live in our minds. Let’s live in our hearts too!

Let’s let our hearts play with attention.

💙

~ A.P.

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.

Mary Oliver, from the poem When I am among the Trees in the book Devotions

“.. and you too have come into this world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.” (Mary Oliver) (Photo by Aditi Premankit)

Advertisement