Pay Attention – Or Life Passes You By

My brain does this funny thing sometimes when it decides it's time to wake up at 3am to fling around some existential dread. Only recently it decided to hurt me more than usual, which was a great experience. It asked the following question:

"How many life-changing, wonderful moments passed you by because you weren't paying attention to what was happening?"

Yes, a real fun one! Extremely hurtful and highly applicable in our modern times where attention has become the ultimate economic good.

Imagine you're walking down the main street of where you live, being on your phone, reading work emails. Simultaneously, you're bombarded with notifications and sounds from all over the place. The human brain is like a camera: it can focus on anything, but only on one thing at a time. In our modern times, our brains must be more like liquid lens cameras: switching from one thing to another faster than the blink of an eye. More accurately, technology made us into liquid lens cameras, albeit really crappy ones.

But that's not all. Not even close. We're distracted not only by our surroundings, but our own thoughts. "Man, I need to pay my bills in time and oh the taxes – I need to do my taxes. This sucks. I also still haven't met the person I want to spend the rest of my life with and oh who won the game last night?"

We're in this maelstrom of babble – we completely miss the person walking past us who is our type and smiled at us.

It's a scary thought. I don't even want to know what could've been. Some people may argue whatever must come your way will come your way. But you will only be able to spot it if you're actually participating in life – or rather your attention participates.

But here's the good news: there's a participation trophy that's actually worth something when we pay attention to life. Instead of living on autopilot, we actually get to experience it. Yet we have to make the choice to abstain from distractions. It's no one's responsibility but ours. A heavy weight to carry? Yes. But also an immensely precious one, because in carrying the weight, we give ourselves the proof that we have the strength to do so.