Your Attention, Please!

YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE. The great spiritual traditions have all wanted us to pay attention to how we pay attention and to what. They've asked us to focus on what we focus on. Attention matters. Focus bring can bring us great good or terrible ill.

The philosopher and novelist Irish Murdoch even suggests in her little book The Sovereignty of Good that what we habitually pay attention to and focus on creates most of our ethical life. We build up through our focused attention, or lack thereof, structures of value and commitment that may or may not be healthy and helpful throughout our days. And when the time comes to make an ethically charged decision, the choice has often already been made by those freely but often unconsciously adopted structures of value and commitment.

Pay attention to what hooks your attention. Focus on what you habitually focus on. And ponder why. You may learn a lot as a result.

An Opportunistic Cat

I know one opportunistic cat. His name is Odie. Whenever he sees a new open box or drawer, or a platter left out in the kitchen, he'll find a way to get into it or onto it. Sometimes, it's amazing what he can do. We'll see where he's perched himself, and look around for the means he must have used and find ourselves saying "How did he do that?" But, do it, he does.

Odie is an ongoing lesson to me about the opportunistic mentality. He already has certain CATegories in mind (sorry) - a box, drawer, bucket, laundry basket, or basket of any kind, or a large bowl or anything that can contain him for a momentary repose. And whenever one of these things appears, his focus on getting to it and into it, or onto it, is so intense and unwavering that he inevitably finds a way. He always finds a way, even where there doesn't seem to be one.

I was reorganizing three sock drawers the other day, and as soon as I had cleaned one out and turned around, I discovered to my great surprise that he had managed to find a way that I could not at all retrace, into the open drawer. That's the power of a clear goal and a focused concentration on what it may take to attain the goal. That's the opportunistic mindset at work.

What's your goal now? How opportunistic are you being about it. The opportunistic mindset is often a CATalist to success. Yeah, I couldn't resist it, either.