A thousand and one things grab at our attention and focusing takes more work than ever. There’s already plenty of advice out there for how to maintain focus by turning off/putting away as many sources of distraction as possible. But it’s not just social media and news feeds. It’s also the things outside of ourselves that, in some way or another, we want to attend to. The friend we haven’t called, the soup kitchen we haven’t volunteered for, the global catastrophe that is probably too big for us to do anything about, or is it?
When does ignoring distraction become ignoring parts of ourselves? What if the thoughts and feelings pulling for our focus are not necessarily static to be turned down, but actually signal that there is something undone in our lives? What if, what we call focus, is just another form of inattentiveness?
Leave a Reply