Pay Attention

Those words, pay attention, carry more emotional weight for me than any other words I can think of. They make me cringe and want to hide away. They make me want to give it all up and drink poison.

If my sisters read this blog, they'll be laughing just at the title. Because this was the mantra of a certain parent of mine to me practically every day, possibly every waking hour of my life as an older child. I am HORRIBLE at paying attention, and it is a very bad character trait, I promise you I know that.

As evidence I could provide cupboards full of broken dishes, a whole atlas full of wrong turns, calendars rife with forgotten appointments, a banquet of ruined cooking. Beyond all this, the worst consquence of my inability to give up on my self-absorbed maundering obsessions--a lifetime of many profoundly stunted and damaged or simply altogether missed opportunities to love and know the amazing people who surround me.

And when i decide ok, this time, i'm really going to be different, i really will pay attention every waking moment, I have no freaking idea how to even begin to do this. To even begin to slow down to the degree necessary--it feels like I'm walking in slow motion through a tight tunnel filled with sharp pointy things. I go back to wanting to drink poison.

And yet I find when I am around someone who is attentive, in any way, I am profoundly blessed. If I can slow down enough to watch how other people --those attentive ones--- wash dishes, chop carrots, shop for vegetables, interact with children, listen to their friends -- it's amazing to me. I feel like I'm in the presence of some kind of grace I would give almost anything to experience. But even these words feel like I'm lying to you all. I don't know if I have ever slowed down enough in real time to actually attend to anything as it is happening-- i'm always processing after the fact--(meaning that I'm always a few steps behind--meaning I'm never paying attention in the moment i'm actually in)... Still, I realize after the fact that I have been around some people who live life in a more alive, present, unhurried, attentive manner. And the realization -- it moves me from wanting to drink poison to longing to partake in this world, this grace they seem to have access to that I have never experienced.

Jesus says, "only one thing is necessary," to Martha. Sometimes I wonder if that was what he was talking about--all you need is to choose one thing-- and that one thing, that one choice, listening to him, becoming alive to his word--perhaps that is attention. Why wouldn't I pay everything to get this?