Manual Focus: Part One

I am making a concerted effort to be focused – focused in a different sense than I have been in the past. Certainly I have experience “focusing”…. One might even say I excel at it. Unfortunately, the things that I’ve “focused” on have not necessarily been healthy, nor have I been managing that focus. At all. In truth, “focus” is a euphemism in this particular situation…a euphemism for, say, “obsess.” This approach, or lack of approach, has not served me well. It is only recently – however – that I have realized just how “unwell” it is, and – so – I am (once again) embracing transformation.

The practice of true focus, or concentration, is – I know – particularly challenging in this overwhelming, over-stimulating world that I (we) am (are) immersed in. Not only am I over-stimulated, but I have – while shunning many parts of it (television: non-existent in my home; radio: no, thank you; loud music: not happening…) –paradoxically embraced other elements of it like a child embracing a balloon. I am, particularly, drawn to my “smart phone.” I am so attuned to this device that I have taken to imagining that it is calling to me at all times, even if it is not – actually – possible. The chirps and beeps of other people’s phones brings me to a halt in the middle of whatever I am doing, as if I were a mother hearing the sound – in the distance – of her child in distress. I routinely pat down the sides of my body in response to imagined vibrations of my phone heralding an incoming communication. This is undoubtedly disturbing to the people surrounding me at those times, particularly when they may witness this compulsive “patting” ritual several times in a five-minute time span. Were I to see someone else engaged in this bizarre behavior I might suspect that they carried a concealed weapon, and that they were planning to use it.

Ironically, this over-engagement and attentiveness to all incoming communications leads – more often than not – to disappointment when the actual message is received. When my entire life – the activity and/or thoughts that are the essence of my ‘living’ – stops in response to an incoming message, how frequently can that message possibly be worthy of the suspension of my “being”? Not – I assure you – very often.

[Work in progress. To be continued.]