Marcia's Musings: The Gift of Giving Your Full Attention
/After long, turbulent hours chained to my computer one gorgeous April Florida day, the swaying palms and exotic twenty-foot bird of paradise outside my window spoke their magic. “Shut the lid on that laptop,” they seemed to command. “Sit in the golden soft sunlight for just a while.”
All day long, I’d roamed the combative realm of divided attention: sneaking in an answer to a text or two while in Zoom meetings; answering phone calls from colleagues and friends while writing emails or editing articles, and cramming some non-descript food into my hungry body while reading business documents. I felt depleted and alienated. Split attention takes a toll on us as we now well know, giving lie to decades of training people how to multi-task.
I listened to the palms and the birds of paradise, packed my woven-straw beach bag with books, sunscreen, towels, and late-afternoon snacks and libations and biked the one block to my neighborhood’s pool, the azure water gently heated and lapping endlessly like ocean waves. I deliberately abandoned the iPhone on the kitchen counter with a “there-take-that!” attitude. To my surprise – and delight – the chairs and tables were empty, most of my neighbors preparing for or on the way to dinner. I settled in and settled down, the less-intense sunlight warming my body and releasing my tired muscles and bones. My scattered mind calmed as it pulled itself together.
About 30 minutes into my solitary reverie, the sound of the lock releasing the pool gate reached my ears. I looked up from my book to see one of my neighbors – I’ll call him Matt for the sake of privacy – stroll toward me. “Do you want to visit?” he asked. “I don’t want to interrupt.” I knew that Matt momentarily was holding down the fort alone due to a remodeling project requiring oversight while his wife flew “back home” to see the kids and a play. “Sure,” I said. He folded his tall frame into the chair next to me.
Our conversation wandered through topics often shared by people of my age and generation: hobbies, health, the economy, former (or current) careers, the state of the landscaping surrounding our condos, the pandemic, and the more-personal subjects of grandchildren and children. At some point, Matt mentioned the name of a beloved daughter who had died in college a few years ago. Over time, I’d pieced together some of this sad story. Now, it seemed, it lay bare between us.
“Matt, would you like to talk about your daughter, to paint a picture of her for me?” I asked. “If it’s helpful, I would love to listen, to get to know her through you.” I am uncertain what I sensed in Matt to cause me to ask this – perhaps a twinkle in his eye, a wistfulness in his voice, an energy of longing to remember and to tell. For the next half hour or so, he brought his talented, strong-willed daughter to life with vivid descriptions of her as a child, as a teen, and finally as a young woman. We laughed and shared, and Matt tolerated my questions with ease and openness. Sometimes, tears leaked down his bearded face, such a human response that he didn’t hide it or offer an apology.
I became aware, as we chattered away, of a feeling so intense, or gratifying, so present, so familiar, and so buried that it touched every cell as it spread throughout my body. It was the warmth of giving my direct attention to someone for sustained time without the interruption of phones, tablets, laptops, and competing activities: eyes locked, questions answered with ease, pauses to reflect as memories poured forth. The observer in me understood that I was having a somatic experience – my mind-body connection, unencumbered by split attention, surveyed my internal self as it absorbed the joy, the privilege, and the passion of giving my sole attention to just one thing, in this case to Matt. My central nervous system calmed, my breathing deepened, I felt present, light, relaxed.
As the sun began to set, Matt thanked me for my time, for what he called, and I’m paraphrasing, the gift of remembering his daughter and talking about her because so many people kindly avoid asking for fear of stirring up pain. As he turned to walk away, I called to him. “Thank you, Matt, for this wonderful conversation, for allowing me to be present with you in this. I, too, am the lucky one tonight.” We both left feeling seen and heard.
Later as I sank into my bed, crisp white sheet pulled up to my chin and cat at my feet, I set an intention to recommit to a practice of giving people – or activities – my full attention one-by-one. When we do that, we actually are the recipients of a great gift. The powerful embodied feelings of my conversation with Matt continued to flow even several hours later. I felt connected, content, and oh-so-alive, all from being fully attentive on who had been in front of me. May it always be so.
