Attention

A little reminder to myself

Prayer and gratitude have been themes in my life for years. I go through phases of intensely focusing on one or, often, both. And then there are phases of lull, where the hustle of life continues more loudly than either. This inconsistency sometimes bothers me, I want to build and build and not ever regress or revisit. I really enjoyed this idea explored in a recent Substack article by Annelise Roberts. She writes on the idea of life as a garden, not a machine: "I’ve been fighting feelings of failure for needing to revisit things I thought I was done with. One day not too long ago I looked out at my garden beds, and had this realization — I don’t tell myself I’m failing because I have to replant the garden every spring. It doesn’t mean I didn’t do the planting last year. It’s never the same garden, even if you plant the same seeds. You have to do it every year, but the repetition isn’t failure, it’s just how it works."

I still have the knowledge that I have gained over time in my focus on gratitude and some of the habits remain. More seed needs to be planted, some things uprooted, some things tended. I love that in the image of a garden there are seasons as well as repetition. The same garden looks different in different seasons, gratitude looks different in different seasons. Energy looks different in different seasons. I remain convinced that it is important to practice these things until they are a part of me, so deeply rooted that I cannot see the world without their influence. The idea of a garden simply helps me lean into the ebb and flow more, into the humanness of it all. A reminder that growth and beauty is dynamic, not merely a stable upward trajectory. 

That being said, I am once again looking at how gratitude fits into and shapes my living. I have written on this before, and I am reminding myself again. Joy. I know Joy. That bubbling over, that deep contentment, that knowing that I am alive. Yes, another sunrise. Another deep breath. Another armfull of toddler. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It always surprises me how much power my attention has. How much I am shaped by what I am looking at.

In amongst the chaos and the tension. Hiding in the lines beside my neighbour's eyes. Nestled in the heaps of unfolded laundry and riding on the cold April rain, there is joy. Gratitude is so difficult to maintain in retrospect, without the noticing. We can remember those moments of noticing, those moments where gratitude rose up in us. In the remembering, gratitude rises again and we look with both eyes at her soaring. If we look back at our day and say to ourselves, “That was a good thing, I should be grateful,” we will tire ourselves out. We cannot carry our own joy, it flows from where we look. What we can do is notice. Learn and learn and learn to notice. To pay attention. To pause and absorb the moment. Then, in the remembering, that moment can come alive again. As I write my gratitude list at the end of the day; it is also a list of where I was looking, what I allowed to carry weight.

This month I have been focusing on noticing connection. I have been reading The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy” . I am often surprised how small negative interactions can impact my day; a stranger commenting derisively on the volume of my baby's crying, a passive-aggressive note from a neighbour or unsolicited nutrition advice from a family member. I give these things so much influence over me because I give them so much focus, I give them emotional and mental space instead of acknowledging how and why that affected my feelings and moving on. I also have many positive interactions in my day. The Aldi teller who chats enthusiastically and always notices if I change my hair, the middle aged couple who subtly shooed me in front of them and cheerfully helped me unload my groceries from the trolley as I handled two crying children, sympathetic eye contact from another mom as I raise my eyes from my tantruming child and friends taking turns watching each other's children so that we can Winter-dip in the lake. When I start looking and noticing and tallying there is just so much to see. Strangers and neighbours and friends. So many interactions in my days, so many small kindnesses.

This poem from the aforementioned book says it so well:

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

So, with this post, I remind myself and I remind you to pay attention. I remind myself and you to connect. Let us enrich this world with those small kindnesses that cost us nothing. Let us see each other. Let us give space to the good stuff.