The Choice to Place My Attention

Since my interest in mindfulness began over 13 years ago, I have come across this quote by 19th century American philosopher, psychologist, physician, and author William James many times over when reading books or watching interviews with prominent mindfulness experts:

My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items I notice shape my mind.


This week, while trying to keep up with my renewed commitment to work out at the gym 3-4 mornings per week, I was reminded of this sentiment when watching the cable channel, Fox News.


For the purposes of full disclosure, I must admit, Fox News is not my preferred source for current events. 


However, among the dozens of televisions that fill my gym at 5:30 a.m., for some reason Fox News is on about a third of them. So regardless of where I am working out, it is impossible to not have a full screen in front of me with closed captioning and all.


It started off as a news morning like any other in 2017- stories about presidential tweets, sexual abuse allegations, Republican bills that hang in the balance, and international upset in the Middle East and North Korea.


But this week, in consideration of the wisdom of Mr. William James, rather than just getting worked up into frustration, I decided to begin to watch for themes in the news stories; like threads that seem to weave in and out of each individual news clip.


Of course it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what themes would emerge from a morning of Fox News.  But all the same, I will tell you anyway...Anecdotally, these were the Top 5:


1.) Stories of Police Officers and Veterans Either Being Awarded or Persecuted,
2.) Stories of Attacks on the Christmas Holiday and Christianity in General,
3.) Stories of the Danger of Global Terrorism,
4.) Past Negative Actions of Secretary Hillary Clinton, and
5.) Coverage of President Donald Trump's Tweets on Twitter.


My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items I notice shape my mind.


Noting the repetition of the same themes over and over from one news story to another, I was reminded again how easy it really is to shape a mind, and in turn a community.


Not that this is unique to Fox News.


In the late 90's when I was an undergraduate at Simmons College, I did a mini-study as part of my Senior Thesis Project in the Sociology Department in which I reviewed a year of journalistic reporting on Mexico to find out how the country of Mexico was being represented in the print media.


I picked 3 newspapers: The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. 


I won't go in to the results (again, I know this isn't rocket science) because they were just as you might suspect; a cliché of Mexican stereotypes. 


But as a young person, having just done study abroad in central Mexico, it was incredibly disappointing to me that the rich history and culture that I had come to know was all but invisible in the popular media outlets.


I had had a similar experience several years earlier when I was a sophomore in high school traveling to Russia.


It was 1992, just one year after the official fall of The Soviet Union when my high school was still trying to figure out what to rename the social studies class that they used to call "The Communist World," and I was fortunate to find myself living in a teeny tiny apartment with a small family in urban Moscow.


Though it was very brief, a visit really, my time and personal experiences in Russia were enough to break through (and break up) the narratives and perspectives that had long been shaped in my young American mind.


Experiences like having the entire Russian host-family sit quietly in their small living room and pray for me the morning I was to fly home so that God would protect me in my travels. 


Or the night I sat down to dinner with the family only to realize that my plate was the one and only with a piece of meat on it.


Or the story my host-sister told me about the money that was being raised by all of the neighbors in the apartment building in order to help a family get a heart transplant for their daughter.


I still hold these pivotal experiences close to my heart today, and I intentionally set them against the backdrop of the one and only news story that is told these days about Russia: Vladimir Putin.


[Such an incomplete narrative.  Such a narrow scope of attention.]


Which reminds me, there is another famous quote that invokes this principal of attention, but it is in a much more hopeful sense.


It is a quote by the 20th century pioneering American author and environmentalist (before that was even a word) Rachel Carson.

It seems reasonable to believe — and I do believe — that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.


We can focus our attention...


Or in other words, where we place our attention matters.


Here's the good news though: we can choose where we place our attention because modern neuroscientists like Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin assure us, through the magic of neuroplasticity, we can train our attention.


Even William James knew it all those years ago when he wrote in his book The Principles of Psychology:


Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought, localization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatter brained state which in French is called distraction, and zerstreutheit in German.


Withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.


Making the choice, based on our own values, wisdom, intellect, and intuition, to turn the mind toward one object while simultaneously releasing another is a powerful, and I would argue moral, decision.


Or as 20th century English-American Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.H. Auden wrote:

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.


I will try to remember these important sentiments the next time I sit down on my blue cushion to meditate. 


Because according to another Pulitzer Prize winning American poet Mary Oliver:

Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter.


Therefore, each time I notice my attention has wandered away from my breath during mindfulness meditation, I have the incredible opportunity to make the courageous and purposeful decision to place my attention in a way that will bring greater well-being to myself and possibly (hopefully) to others as well.


May it be so.