Paying Attention
It seems so simple.
One Saturday morning around 9 am, after breakfast, shaving, and showering, I ventured outside. First I was going to empty our basement storage room dehumidifier, then I was going to put out a lawn chair next to the sidewalk, reward dogs for walking their humans, and listen to podcasts.
A young woman approached Lazy Jane’s Bakery, looking at the entrance and then back to her phone. If you are on the same side of Willy Street as St. Vincent de Paul Store, and are directly across from The Madison Greenhouse Store, then Lazy Jane’s Bakery is on the left, and Lazy Jane’s Café is on the right. The Bakery is where the homemade goodies for the Café are created, and is only infrequently opened early Saturday or Sunday mornings to handle overflow baked goods as warranted.
Today it wasn’t warranted, and the Bakery was closed. The young woman was confused. Someone had likely told her to “…meet for Breakfast at Lazy Jane’s”.
The apparent concentration on her face was so thick that it almost literally wove the following tapestry of word-bubbles above her head:
—They said meet at Lazy Lane's.
—But Lazy Jane's is closed.
—It's 9:07…I'm late.
I likely then scribed the following word-bubble:
—Who is this strange man talking to me?
“Excuse me,” I said, “but that's the Bakery. The Café is next door, if you're looking for the restaurant.”
“What?” She said, and she looked at her phone again.
The apparent concentration I saw earlier on her face wasn't focus, rather confusion.
“I said, ‘The Café is next door.’ It’s on the other side of The Greenhouse Store,” and I stepped back, gesturing.
“Oh, thanks.” She put her phone in her pocket, walked to the Café door, looked at me, tilted her head ever so slightly, then turned and went inside.
I had just witnessed a human confounded. For a moment there were too many things being presented for her attention, exceeding her ability to process them effectively, and this person did not know what to do as things had gone against expectation.
The first and only thing to do is to pay attention, to one thing at a time, which is the only attention you can give, anyway.
Many of us think that we can “multitask”,1 or perform multiple acts simultaneously, and well. The fact is, but for a tiny minority of people, we can do neither. This person had tried to read her phone and explore her surroundings at the same time. She failed to do either well, or rather, excelled at doing both poorly.
It is more difficult than we realize to pay attention. I know this because I fail at it all the time, and so do you. Whether the matter at hand is great or small is irrelevant.
We can demonstrate how hard it is to pay attention to something by showing how hard it is when we try to pay attention to nothing.
Pay attention to nothing by thinking of nothing. Think of nothing by emptying your mind. Empty your mind by focusing on your breathing.
In. Out. Breathe in….out.
In. Out. Breathe in….out.
In. Out.
Wait…a thought.
Why did you think that? You had nothing to concentrate on, literally. And yet, the thought appeared.
Someone says something. “Leonardo.” Ninja Turtle, or Oscar-winning randy actor?
You just pictured both in your mind just now. Did you jump immediately to the cartoon or live-action Turtle, and is Captain ‘Hey, There…’ at the bow of The Titanic?
Just who IS in charge of your mind, anyway?
It is difficult enough to think of nothing. Paying attention is hard, and a skill that requires practice.
Set aside for now whether it's turtles all the way down challenging Free Will,2 and consider the inverse. Instead of paying attention to nothing, let us return to paying attention to something. You, the Subject, have an Object.
Now…add another Object. When we try to multitask, we are like a person trying to juggle. Almost everyone can toss a single ball into the air, catch it with the same hand, and toss it up into the air again. Many of us can handle 2 balls with 2 hands, and if we practice, a lot, 3 balls with 2 hands. Beyond that point we have few Adepts, and the population of people who can successfully juggle multiple balls is small, relative to the population as a whole.
Extrapolate from managing a few balls to interacting with multiple, disparate Objects. To some of those Objects, add Consciousness, whatever that is. A dog? A person? Add another sentient, or multiple sentients.
Now…communicate effectively with everyone.
Is human multitasking possible? Yes, but it's unlikely, and if you really can, you are an oddity.3
If you can only do one thing at a time well, you can only pay attention to one thing at a time well. Thus, irrespective of how complex things get, doing one thing at a time is as good as you get.
Given the complexity of The Universe, the task of paying attention to everything seems both paramount and impossible. That isn’t fair, but Life isn’t fair. One can easily understand how trying to comprehend that profundity can quickly spiral into a mental frenzy. If the three ingrained Threat-Reactions are Fight, Flight, and Freeze,4 then a realistic reaction to the richness of the tapestry of Life could be the latter.
We can freeze as we cross the street and see that car approaching, or as we try to meet our friend for breakfast at a restaurant and find a bakery closed.
How do we proceed?
Pay attention to one thing at a time.
Then, have Breakfast.