Attention

Do you ever feel like you are going through life with blinders on? Do you find yourself standing in the kitchen, drinking your coffee, thinking: wait a second, I barely remember even making coffee? We all need times when we aren’t paying attention, when we are operating on auto-pilot. There is a reason our brains are so good at that automatic function! But sometimes, we also need the vibrancy that comes when we deliberately and carefully pay attention to our environment. A year ago, when life was more normal, I attended an all-day workshop for building connections among artists and artist groups in my area. We went outside in the afternoon with one task: to pay attention. We could have a partner to meet up with after the first ten minutes to discuss but we needed to pay attention in silence and on our own. I wandered over to a tree that I passed every time I drove into the parking lot at the office building and sat. A grasshopper-like creature was making his way up the tree trunk. I watched, fascinated, as he seemed to know just when he could bound ahead and when the bark required that he reach out his antennae, gathering information about his path by feel.