On Looking

           It has come to my understanding that the thought of paying attention has a deeper meaning than what most people think, or at least what I thought.  After reading an excerpt from On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz I understood the author’s standing on what paying attention is.  The author feels that she cannot focus on just one thing when she is walking.  She came to the conclusion that she had to pay “selective attention” to the things around her.

            Maybe one can associate this to being paranoid, or wary, but in a positive way; the sense that you’re watchful of your surroundings and have a keen observation.  You have an alertness to everything that is around you, and you can respond quickly to whatever may require your attention.  The author describes this as having a conversation with a friend while a group of friends is having a conversation amongst them. You can hear both conversations, but you only pay attention to the one you’re having with your friend.  The second you hear your name in the other conversation you immediately wonder and being to pay attention to the other conversation.  It can be something like multitasking giving each task an equal amount of attention.

            The author wrote the book to create, or motivate in herself, an incessant looking after the things that might give us motivation, things that might provoke inspiration and things that are considered distractions to us.

         Active meditation, could be a phrase to describe how I implement this in my life.  When I study, for example, I tend to pick an open place where my surroundings are trees, you can hear a bird or two… basically it is a place full of life.  This is a place where I can feel the breeze, I can hear the sound of leaves moving, maybe a one falls every now and then, but I choose to pay chose to zero attention to it; and like the author, she is aware of her surroundings and can choose to pay attention to anything that might be relevant.

Here are a link to a video about the author talking about her book and the thoughts she had when she wrote the book.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFpJHMXZDXw