I want my attention back

A post about vying for your own attention, with a few practices to help

I thank god that I spent the bulk of my childhood in the 90’s. Me and my best buds riding bikes alongside the White River in the Indianapolis suburbs or adding to our rickety treehouse in the sycamore in my backyard or playing street hockey at the end of the cul-de-sac. And playing a little bit of Nintendo, too, here and there. But never once having to navigate the pings of a dumb phone or the siren call of anti-social media or the desperate screams of so so so many screens.

It’s tempting to stand now and holler from the platform: “Make childhood the 90’s again!”

But that kind of wanting to go backwards, that brand of nostalgia, doesn’t tend to lead to much of anything good. And it certainly doesn’t lend us the spiritual muscularity that we need in order to navigate novelty, integrate change, and make creative contributions to the here-and-now, right in the midst of whatever realities we and our children are living out.

Sometimes, when I’m reflecting on why I’ve led wilderness trips periodically and professionally for over two decades—and why I’m drawn to the wilds personally—I understand my propensity for wild space as:

1. An escape from the spiritual clutter of so much consumer driven culture.

2. A venue for sturdying up our spirits in order to be able to deal with those demands once we inevitably return to our front country lives.

I go to the wilderness for the same reason I write, the reason I pray, the same reason I read poetry and go for walks and paused just now to take a deep breath and feel the air rush into me through my nostrils:

I want my attention back, and I mean to have it.

Who else out here is in constant pursuit of their birthright?

Your attention is your birthright. What you give of your birthright should be yours to give, purposefully. It’s often not though. Which is not your fault. The attention economy grabs at your birthright pretty well everywhere you might cast a glance.

But is there anyone else out there keen, nevertheless, to keep on wrestling back your attention? You with me?

Here are three things I’ve been doing lately to help me pay attention better to the things and matters and moments that I want to be paying attention to:

1. When I get home from the grocery store I take a minute or two to peel ever single sticker off of every piece of produce that I’ve purchased. It’s not as good, I acknowledge, as planting the garden or the orchard and growing the fruit myself, but it slows me down enough to see the thing for what it is. Every plum is a miracle.

2. I’ve been religiously waiting, every day, to check my email in the afternoon. Not a moment before. In the mornings I’m committed to making something—anything—of my own volition, before opening myself to the asks of others.

3. For about a month now I’ve been playing with this really great prayer practice, where I start my days asking, “What would you have me know today?” and then paying attention to what I hear back, and jot it down.

I’ll tell you more about that last one soon.

Meanwhile, how might you slow down a little bit today and wrestle back some of that attention that is rightfully yours?