The power and joy of attention
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
-- Henry David Thoreau
When I was a graduate student in Canada, I got curious about the religions of the world. I explored the philosophies of many including Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. I picked up their ideas and held them up to light, trying to find ones that resonated with me. The practice of meditation in particular drew my attention. I wanted to understand it better. So, one day I decided to join a local community of meditators.
I began to drive daily to a dusty second floor apartment in East Vancouver, where about eight of us gathered to spend a few minutes in complete silence. We would kneel on soft off-white cushions placed against a wall covered with chipped cream paint. We would flutter our eyes half-shut at the clang of a gong and stay in stillness for twenty minutes. Then the gong would go off again, and we would get up and gather in the center of the room.
The leader of the group would bring in a pot of hot jasmine tea along with eight little ceramic cups. In the silence of room, the clatter of the cups would be loud. The leader would take up the pot from the floor and serve tea to her neighbor to the left. The neighbor would accept the cup with a bow, place it down, take the pot herself, and serve her neighbor to the left. And on and on we went around the circle, filling tea for our neighbors and accepting our own cups with gratitude. When everyone's cup was filled, we would silently lift our cups and breathe in the delicate scent of jasmine. We would feel the heat seep from the liquid to the ceramic to our palms and notice the steam curl up in front of our faces. We would take tiny sips, all the while paying attention to nothing but the tea and how it warmed our bodies on those cold and clammy winter evenings in Vancouver.
I was part of this meditation group for a single winter. There came a time when the ritualist aspects of the group started to rankle me, and I stopped going. Two aspects of that experience, however, stayed with me:
1- I found the practice of meditation to be highly therapeutic and spiritual. I continued meditating at home and still do so almost every day.
2- Those tea sessions stayed in my memory. I was impressed by how much the practice stressed paying attention to the tiniest of details.
The tea ceremony came back to my mind last weekend when I went for a long walk in my neighborhood trail. I have run on that trail for years now, hardly registering the details on it. As I slowed down to a walk last weekend and forced myself to pay attention, my environment started to come alive. I saw the first cherry blossoms of the season, blooming in a riotous explosion of pink and white. I noticed the lime green weeds and moss growing with abandon on all surfaces including the muddy canal by the side of the trail. I heard the incessant warbling of songbirds and the tap-tap-tap of a lone woodpecker. I felt the cold touch of the winter air on my cheeks.
These details had however become a blurry backdrop to my daily runs. And it is so with many other things in life too. We often move too fast through our activities to notice much of what’s going on. We move from pillar to past, scarcely paying attention.
But whether we are out and about on a walk or writing code or welding metal, paying attention is important.
Attention can add color and wonder to our lives. Noticing the tiny details about life and nature makes us realize what a fabulous thing life is. After a long day of humdrum, have you ever looked up at the sky at dusk and been overwhelmed by the flamboyant reds of the sunset? Have you looked at a newborn child's tiny toes curl in on themselves and marveled at how this new life is here now when it was nothingness before? These wondrous details make our lives interesting.
Attention makes us better at work and life. If you are a programmer, you should care about your craft deeply. Paying attention to every single line of code can help you write better code. If you want to be a good leader for your team, you should pay attention to every single person on the team - to what excites them, what brings them down, and how they are feeling. If you want to be a good partner or a good parent, you should keenly listen to your loved ones and care about the smallest details of their lives. Details can make an explosive difference to the quality of your work and life. Steve Jobs is reputed to have obsessed over the tiniest details of the products Apple shipped. He cared about even the parts that a customer could not see. He agonized over the exact shade of yellow on the Google logo as seen on an iPhone. There are music composers, painters, sculptors, chefs, and fashion designers that are legendary for their attention to detail.
Attention can make us happy. Caught up in ourselves and our anxieties, we can often become pre-occupied and unhappy. We brood about the past or worry about the future. We become self-absorbed. But if we stopped and paid attention to the present moment, we can get out of our own heads. Getting out of our heads is a good first step to happiness.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
-- Simone Weil
It is a myth that greatness is in the big things - in monumental discoveries, audacious projects, and thrilling adventures. In our raucous modern world, the quiet whisper of minutiae feels unglamourous and uncool. But it is in paying attention to these details that success and happiness lie.
So next time you have dinner with someone, instead of wolfing it down in front of the TV, slow down and pay attention to the flavors and to your partner. When you are writing a document for work, pause - perhaps even move to a different task altogether before you come back - and then reread what you have written. Carefully look over the details and make sure the text will make sense to the intended audience. If you are out on a walk at twilight, gaze at the black sky and breathe in the night air. I bet that your happiness, the quality of your work, and the joy in your life will multiply. It is in details that we find the stuff of life and beauty.