Attention Must Be Paid (For)

By Dan Hagen 

Over the course of months, I’ve become increasingly convinced of the underrated existential importance of the simple act of shifting your attention.

For example, this morning I awoke before dawn, started the coffee and read a front page newspaper article about further cuts in higher education to be caused by the state’s terrible finances. I immediately began to worry, to feel threatened, even though nothing had objectively changed from my situation a few moments before.

Then I took my beagle and book to the sofa and found my place on page 97 in the biography of the British author Christopher Isherwood. Within mere moments, I was cheerfully absorbed.

Again, nothing had objectively changed for me, but now I was learning something — in this case, about life as another had lived it — and that alone made my clinging worries vanish like a mist in sunlight.

In our new century, we are trained by our tools to seek constant digital stimulation, a practice that shortens our attention spans and leaves us open — vulnerable — to millions of messages that may not do us any good at all.

We are under constant digital bombardment. The digital media seeks “eyeballs.” Our eyeballs. We shouldn’t sell them so cheaply.

Our attention colors the world, and yet we usually pay no attention to it. Start. Do. Shift your attention.