What Will You Pay Attention To Today?

I rarely mark in books I own; I did it all through college but have never seen the point in a book I am reading "for fun".  That changed today.  The title of this post are the words I underlined in a book I finished reading on vacation.  I should write a formal review of the book, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life by Karen Maezen Miller, but for now I want to focus on this one point she made and share with you her insights.

She writes:

Attention is the most concrete expression of love.  What we pay attention to thrives.  What we do not pay attention to withers and dies.


What will you pay attention to today?

In my mind, no truer words have been written.  If you are paying attention to something, clearly it holds some sort of value to you; we only have so much time on this earth, so what you give your time to must be what you love and deem important.  The sad thing is, how much of our time do we give to those things that we actually don't see as important (time-fillers, if you will)?

So today I make my start, a conscious effort to attend to the things I love, the people I love.  For someone like me with attention deficit disorder, it is difficult not to get side-tracked by the novel and the train-wrecks.  It takes concentration and a great deal of effort, but those are small prices to pay if I can truly convey to my loved ones how much I care for them.  I know I won't always be perfect, won't always be able or remember to give my full attention.  But I can try my best, and I can do things to help myself focus.  Like closing our laptop when the kiddos are awake, keeping the television off (which I usually do anyway), and trying to get chores and blogging done while I have alone time.

No end-goal to achieve, no level of mastery to acquire ... this will just be a new practice for my life.  Something for which to strive for every day.

What will you pay attention to today?