A friend told me that her department was gathered together to discuss a tiresome little issue they had already spent too much time on at earlier meetings. The prospect of still more repetition of unimportant positions on the subject was too boring to bear so she announced she would not deal with that issue any further and left. See, she is from the old school, the one where when you are with people, you pay attention to them. But in this day of smartphones that vibrate inside your pocket and earbuds and bluetooth mics, it is possible to sit right beside you and pay attention the NBC or the NFL draft or just about anything at all.
I usually envision people at home having the time and attention capacity to travel over the web, read, watch tv and absorb all the other streams of information and entertainment floating by us. Maybe that picture needs adjusting.
Postmodernism likes to call attention to the surround:
- font of the printed article,
- background of the publisher/producer,
- happiness of the cameraman, etc.
More than ever, we need to know where we are putting our attention and to put it on what is truly most important and most loving then and there, that moment, even though some great things are happening on channel 5 and we haven't called our nephew for too long. We need the strength of will to keep our attention on what we know is the best place for it as long as it needs to be there. We need the good manners to excuse ourselves politely and explicitly and take the call outside or later. Otherwise, we are too unreliable and inattentive to be of use to ourselves or others.
In this crowded world, we do owe it to others to be thoughtful of what we are asking them to attend to. If our message needs to be edited, trimmed, culled or summarized, we need to get that work done. The competition for attention is too high to waste it when we get it from others we care about and are responsible for.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
