What I Give My Attention To

The other day, I was sitting with a good friend when he said:

What you give your attention to, you also give power.

We were talking about what we direct our attention toward in life. About how illness can come to occupy more and more space if it remains constantly at the center. About how joy, too, can be given more room if we notice it.

I have been thinking about his words ever since.

Not least because they touched something I myself try to live by. I want to direct my attention toward life. Not toward some imagined life without adversity, illness, or loss, but toward the life that is actually mine.

For what does it really mean to say that what we give our attention to also gains power?

Attention Is Not Control

It is easy to misunderstand the statement.

A person who is seriously ill cannot think themselves well. Grief does not disappear because we turn our eyes toward something beautiful. Loss does not become less real because we decide to be grateful.

Life cannot be governed in that way.

We are struck by things we did not choose. The body changes. People we love become ill or die. Relationships break down. Plans fail. Sometimes things happen that alter the entire landscape in which we live.

Already in Stoic philosophy we find the distinction between what lies within our power and what does not. We cannot decide everything that happens to us. But we do have some room for action in how we respond to what happens.

Attention belongs within that room.

Not as control over life, but as a way of being present in it.

What Comes Into View

We never encounter the world entirely neutrally.

Something comes into view. Something remains in the background.

One morning I may be sitting with a cup of coffee in front of me, noticing that my thoughts have already begun to circle around what worries me. Something that must be examined. Something whose outcome I do not yet know. The body makes itself felt, and attention follows.

Then perhaps I look out of the window.

Light falls on a tree. A bird moves between the branches. The coffee cup is warm between my hands.

The worry has not disappeared.

But it is no longer everything.

This is what interests me.

Not that attention can change reality, but that it can change what is allowed to come into view within reality.

In Gadamer we find the idea that understanding always involves something appearing as something. We do not meet the world like a camera that records everything equally. We interpret. We notice. We bring some things forward. We overlook others.

In this way, attention also works back upon the one who sees.

It does not only shape what I see.

It helps shape how I live within what I see.

When Illness Takes Up the Whole Room

The body sometimes demands attention.

A symptom should be taken seriously. An examination may be necessary. A test result may matter greatly. It would be meaningless to turn attention into an exercise in ignoring what is difficult.

But there is a difference between taking illness seriously and allowing illness to become the whole story of who I am.

I can be ill without being only ill.

I can be old without being only old.

I can be afraid without allowing fear to tell the whole truth about my life.

The difficult should not be pushed away.

But neither does it have to occupy the whole room.

Attention as Practice

Simone Weil wrote of attention as something far more fundamental than concentration. For her, true attention was an openness toward what is actually there.

That makes the concept more demanding.

For attention does not mean selecting what is pleasant and turning away from the rest.

Quite the opposite.

To be attentive may mean seeing sorrow without making it the whole of life. Feeling fear without allowing it the final word. Noticing what still carries us, even when something else begins to falter.

In Weil, attention is also not directed only toward oneself. It is a way of making room for another human being. Here she approaches something of what Buber describes in the encounter between I and Thou: before the other can appear as a Thou, I must be willing to see.

Attention can therefore be more than a way of relating to one’s own life.

It can be an ethical act.

A Life With Many Dimensions

My life has never been a straight line.

It has moved.

Sometimes quietly, sometimes abruptly. There have been periods of security and periods of unease. Joy and sorrow. Victory and loss. Good health and illness.

That does not mean life has failed.

That is life.

Perhaps one of our difficulties is that we so easily imagine the good life as a life in which what is difficult gradually disappears. As though the goal were a condition in which everything has finally fallen into place.

I do not know such a life.

The life I know consists of several things at once.

One can grieve and be grateful.

One can be afraid and still feel safe.

One can lose something and at the same time discover that something else remains firm.

These are not necessarily contradictions.

They are different dimensions of the same life.

Joy Needs Attention

Unease shouts.

Pain demands.

Fear pushes its way forward.

Joy does not always do that.

It can be quiet.

It may lie in a cup of coffee early in the morning. In a glance between two people who have known each other for a long time. In a grandchild coming through the door. In a tree one has followed through the seasons. In the light over the water. In a hand one recognizes.

Such moments almost require us to discover them.

Otherwise they may pass unnoticed.

Perhaps this is why attention gives them power.

Not because attention creates joy, but because it makes us able to receive it.

Kierkegaard wrote about the lily of the field and the bird of the air. They do not live without danger. The bird may lose its nest. The lily withers. And yet, for Kierkegaard, they become teachers in presence, silence, and joy.

Joy does not lie in life being secured.

It lies in life itself.

To Thank Life

I therefore do not think that thanking life means saying that everything has been good.

Some things have been painful.

Some things I would gladly have been spared.

Some things I still carry with me.

But gratitude does not have to be a verdict on what has happened. It need not mean that everything had a meaning, or that suffering necessarily led to something good.

Gratitude can be simpler than that.

I am still here.

I have been allowed to live.

I have loved and been loved. I have failed and tried again. I have known sorrow, but also joy. I have been strong, and I have needed others. I have walked roads I chose myself, and other roads found me.

All of this is life.

When I say that I want to give my attention to life, it does not mean that I turn away from illness, sorrow, or what is difficult.

Rather, I try to see them within a larger context.

Illness exists.

But life exists too.

Sorrow exists.

But the love that made sorrow possible exists too.

Loss exists.

But what was once given to me cannot be made ungiven.

Perhaps this was what my friend was trying to say.

What you give your attention to, you also give power.

I therefore want to try to give my attention to life.