In which I misplace my focus, find it again, and wonder whether I ever really had it to begin with.
I’ve come to suspect that attention may be our era’s most precious and endangered resource,rarer than lithium, more volatile than oil, and fought over with no less cunning. One need only spend an afternoon attempting to read a book without checking one’s phone to realise that the battle for our minds is no longer metaphorical. We live, as the saying goes, in an attention economy,but I fear most of us are being grossly underpaid.
Once upon a quieter time, attention was something we gave freely,to a friend, a task, a sunset. It required no app, no calendar invite, no biometric authentication. But now? Attention is perpetually solicited, harvested, gamified, and sold. It is not merely divided,it is splintered, scattered across more tabs, channels, and timelines than the human psyche was ever designed to process.
Even as I write this, I am resisting the urge to check whether someone has responded to an email I sent four minutes ago. They haven’t, of course. They are likely suffering the same affliction: an inability to remain fully here.
And yet,attention, true attention, is the beginning of everything that matters. Without it, love is shallow, learning is mechanical, prayer is empty, and beauty goes unseen. To attend to something,to someone,is to dignify it. It is to say: You are worthy of my presence. I am not elsewhere.
I first began to appreciate this not in some grand epiphany, but during a rather ordinary moment on my grandfather’s verandah. He was a man of few words and meticulous habits,one of which was to wittle wood with his pocket knife which i had never seen him without. I remember sitting with him as a child, as he whittled wood on the verandah and me fidgeting with the impatience peculiar to the young and under-entertained. At one point, he leaned over and said, not unkindly, “You know, if you sit still long enough, the world starts to speak.”
I was unconvinced. But I tried. And what I began to notice,oh so slowly,was astonishing. The sound of bees fussing in the lavender. The breeze nudging the leaves in gentle applause. The sun warming the stone wall behind us. The rhythm of things.
He was right. The world did speak. But only when I gave it my attention.
There is a kind of magic in focused awareness. Not in a mystical sense (though I wouldn’t rule that out), but in the simple transformation of the ordinary into the luminous. The way a child’s story, told with chocolate on their chin, becomes a sacred text when you really listen. Or how the act of chopping vegetables, when done with care, becomes a kind of prayer.
Attention is the lens through which meaning emerges.
And yet, we treat it so casually. We squander it on outrage and comparison, on arguments with strangers and endless scrolling. We multitask as if fragmentation were a virtue. We rush through the moment in search of the next, like a tourist who photographs the view but never looks up from the camera.
But to pay attention is to inhabit time differently. It is to dwell, not just pass through. It is to take up residence in the present rather than leasing it temporarily while planning an escape.
Of course, this is no easy thing. The devices are loud. The deadlines are real. And our own thoughts, left untamed, tend to gallop off like nervous ponies. But attention, like a muscle, strengthens with practice.
A breath. A sip. A look held a second longer than necessary. A walk without checking your phone. These are small acts of rebellion. They declare that the present moment is not a corridor to somewhere more important. It is the destination.
Perhaps this is why attention has always played a central role in the spiritual life. To be mindful. To behold. To watch and wait. These are not passive acts, but sacred ones. The attention we give,to others, to the world, to ourselves,is a form of love. And like love, it cannot be automated.
So let us reclaim our attention from the algorithms and the urgency. Let us spend it well. Lavishly, even. On people. On beauty. On truth. On the unnoticed gifts that only reveal themselves to the attentive eye.
In a world desperate to distract us, may we become those rare souls who notice.
