Are you having trouble focusing? I know I am.
Right now, the political situation is relentlessly chaotic. It’s a very hard time to concentrate. I stare at my screen, my mind wandering off, unable to complete the simplest sentence. I find myself dissociating repeatedly.
Overwhelm and disengagement result in the same condition: paralysis. Our brains are on overload. We simply cannot decide what we should be doing, and so we do nothing.
Our attention is the most precious commodity in the world—if it weren’t we wouldn’t be bombarded with endless demands for it. But the idea that attention is an article of trade doesn’t occur to most of us, even as we are being manipulated into handing it over to the next shiny object.
This state of mind reminds me of Muriel Rukeyser’s famous poem, which she wrote in 1968, addressing the chaos of the time:
Poem
I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane.
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
I lived in the first century of these wars.
The lines that resonate with me right now are “the news would pour out of various devices; / I would call my friends on other devices.” They seem eerily prescient, even though Rukeyser wrote them long before those ubiquitous devices called cell phones.
Reading is my go-to remedy for the craziness that threatens to engulf me. Years ago, I came across an article about deep reading. Deep reading is the deliberately slow comprehension of a book. When I’m sitting in front of my computer, trying to concentrate, I have a stack of books as protection from the devils of distraction. Poetry is good; a fast-paced novel helps; a magazine fulfils my need to browse without robbing my attention.
As if we needed any more proof, this article from Psychology Today describes how deep reading makes us better thinkers: “Deep reading activates our brain’s centers for speech, vision, and hearing, all of which work together to help us speak, read, and write. Reading and writing engages Broca’s area, which enables us to perceive rhythm and syntax; Wernicke’s area, which impacts our perception of words and meaning; and the angular gyrus, which is central to perception and use of language.”
And, from Robert P. Waxler and Maureen P. Hall, in Transforming Literacy: Changing Lives Through Reading and Writing (Emerald Group, 2011): “[D]eep reading requires human beings to call upon and develop attentional skills, to be thoughtful and fully aware. . . .Unlike watching television or engaging in the other illusions of entertainment and pseudo-events, deep reading is not an escape, but a discovery. Deep reading provides a way of discovering how we are all connected to the world and to our own evolving stories. Reading deeply, we find our own plots and stories unfolding through the language and voice of others.”
So as I sit down to write this morning, with my rampart of attention-preserving books stacked on my desk, I wish you some quality time with your own thoughts.
Please share any attention-preserving techniques that you’ve found effective. Thanks!
I crochet. Seeing something tangible and lovely emerge from a single strand of yarn gives me both hope and joy. And I find listening to familiar classical composers, with predictable cadences and rhythmic patterns, centers me in a way nothing else does. Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart…I could feast on The Brandenburg concertos for every meal…
“I could feast on The Brandenburg concertos for every meal…”
Amen!
Music is very good. And after a long hiatus, I have taken up quilting.
Thanks for Muriel’s great thoughts! And I agree – “devices” sounds modern, but it’s good to know phones you had actually dial were also called devices, as were smoke signals, and yelling across the alleyway through screens.
My “technique” is to always remember the media is trying to create chaos to attempt to lure us into their brand of humor, so I simply don’t listen. Their brand is definitely not created to make anyone feel peaceful and loving. It helps not to have a TV because I’ve seen folks addicted to that. The time spent complaining about “300 channels and nothing worth watching” is better spent reading =:-)
“300 channels and nothing to watch” – so true!
I walk in the fields. I feed the local pigeons. They perch on my shoulders, my lap, my head! I love them so much and I find them very calming.
I have a few: spending time with my 3-year-old granddaughter forces me to be in the moment. So does spending time with my dog. I try to get outside and walk every day, phone stashed somewhere so I can focus on the sky, trees, birds, squirrels, other people. I’ve begun reading actual books more – by which I mean hard copies, not digital – and that time away from screens has made a difference. These are all sanity-preserving as much as attention-preserving in this insane time. Oh, and my partner and I try to sit zazen fairly often, which has been immensely calming and sharpens our focus on whatever we need to be doing.
I believe in hard copy books too. I find that I simply don’t retain as much when I read on the screen.