Lis­ten up. Turn off the TV. Turn down the radio. Put down your phone. Take a break from the news. Look around. Nature res­onates with life in all dimensions.

“The capac­i­ty to dri­ve away a thought once and for all is the door to eter­ni­ty. The infi­nite in an instant.”
— Simone Weil

Where we place our atten­tion directs our real­i­ty. Emerg­ing from a peri­od in which our atten­tion has been con­fis­cat­ed, reclaim­ing our agency over our atten­tion rep­re­sents an impor­tant step toward liberation.

The moment we open our phones we are com­press­ing our sphere of choice into the apps which all vie for our atten­tion. When we set our phones aside, we get to opt out of the “atten­tion econ­o­my”. In that less medi­at­ed space, we open our­selves to the world in a more recep­tive state. We receive the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore and see what serendip­i­ty pro­vides us.

As writer Dan Nixon points out in his arti­cle about how atten­tion con­sti­tutes a way of being alive to the world, “there can be beau­ty and won­der in the unadorned act of ‘expe­ri­enc­ing’.”* In this sense, pure expe­ri­ence offers a con­nec­tion to the eter­nal, because there is no dis­trac­tion plac­ing our atten­tion in a fixed place or time, Nixon posits that atten­tion, as a form of unmedi­at­ed expe­ri­ence, relates to what Simone Weil referred to as “the infi­nite in an instant”. We are inspired by this frame­work for atten­tion, and feel that think­ing of atten­tion, as expe­ri­ence, and not a resource, is an impact­ful way to reclaim author­i­ty in our indi­vid­ual roles with­in an inter­con­nect­ed existence.

Along our way for­ward, we rec­og­nize the val­ue of get­ting lost as it teach­es us how to bet­ter deal with uncer­tain­ty. Free of over­stim­u­la­tion, we may well find our­selves more prone to bore­dom, which we must soft­en of all its neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions. Bore­dom leads to cre­ativ­i­ty and opens up space for pause and intro­spec­tion. Still­ness and soli­tude allow con­scious­ness to rest. A healthy amount of idle time is not only good for us, but makes us more cre­ative. It may even be crit­i­cal to our hap­pi­ness. With only wan­der­ing thoughts for enter­tain­ment, we tune into what our bod­ies might be telling us or what we have buried deep in our psy­ches. These inner secrets, unearthed from deep with­in our­selves, can deliv­er the insights that will help pro­pel us on the path toward regen­er­a­tive living.