THE CRITICAL PRACTICE OF ATTENTION-GIVING
When was the last time you watched seven-year-olds play soccer? It’s adorable, no doubt. Everyone is chasing the ball. They don’t care about running plays, getting into formation, penalties, none of it. Everyone has one thought screaming in their minds: GET THE BALL. But it’s only adorable because they’re seven. If this is how Liverpool faced against Manchester City, it would be a disaster and, while maybe entertaining for some, so frustrating for most. And yet, this is how my mind feels a lot of the time, except with something like a dozen soccer balls in the game, and me chasing whichever one zooms past me in the moment.
Distraction can be exhausting. It’s exhausting, at least for me, because it’s often things that my brain is bringing to the surface or being drawn to, and suggesting, or demanding that I sprint in that new direction. And then moments later, it happens again and I sprint in a whole other direction. Distraction rarely comes in the form of pace, it’s usually accompanied by panic, or at least mild-alert and pseudo-urgency. And most of these distractions can be saved for later if they’re worth thinking about at all.
Saying “no” to unnecessary distractions and saying “later” to the distractions that do need our help at some point requires one of the most critical muscles in the human person: the muscle of attention. Our attention is always somewhere. It is on our work, or it is on a conversation, or it is on a memory, a fantasy, a grudge, a worry, a phone, or potentially loads of other places. And when we choose, as difficult and often as it may be, to redirect our attention to the things that matter in that moment, we build that muscle up to become stronger.
This is what is so good about meditation practices. In meditation, we choose to give our attention to something as simple as our breathing, and redirect it there anytime we get tempted to take it somewhere else. It is a practice that trains our attention to go somewhere, even if it feels there are more critical places to put it. Because that is what our life’s experience will be in a crude simplification: a summation of where we chose (or didn’t choose) to put our attention.
But attention, as I said, really is a muscle. And like a lot of muscles, it will take work to grow. In meditation or concentration-requiring activities (like rock climbing or playing an instrument), we work the muscle. We must continually face the resistance of distraction and choose to return our attention to the matter at hand: our breathing, that next hold, the challenging chord we’re trying to play efficiently. And then that muscle gets to work in our lives all over the place, redirecting our attention to the material we need to study, the lover or friend sitting across the table, or the moments our work feels mundane.
So I’d encourage you to make time for the ways you can practice attention-giving. Whether that’s an instrument, a sport, or even 10 minutes of breathing alone in your room. And though it’ll never be perfect attention, every choice to redirect your mind off of the (inevitable) distractions back onto the matter at hand is another rep in building your attention muscle, at choosing to give your precious attention to the things that matter most.