What happens when you shift your attention from all the problems and dissonance to the good and beauty still present around you?
Today is the last day of a five-week trip to the US and I’ll be sad to leave. As many of you know, our plan is to move here by the end of the year, and we are finally starting to narrow down the question of “where”. While I likely would not have made this choice independently of R (it’s really his dream to move here – I love my life in the UK), I have to say, I am getting more than a little tired of so many people asking me “Are you SURE you want to move to the US with everything that’s going on there? I could NEVER do that!”
Lynda, my energy teacher, always says “Your attention is a powerful energetic tool – whatever you attend to, you notice and augment.” Sure, America has a lot of problems right now. You could say this country has had a lot of problems for a long time. And if I put my attention on all that dissonance – if I spent a lot of time on social media, listened to lots of topical podcasts, and dove into endless political debates – I would augment that incoherence. I’d probably end up like all the brave foot soldiers going mad in Hafiz’s poem I’m sharing this week, falling on the ground in excruciating pain.
But I can also choose to attend to, and thus notice and augment, all the good I have experienced in these past five weeks. The amazing people I have met who are doing their best to make the world a better place. Colleagues and friends who see shades of gray rather than black and white and bring openness, curiosity, and compassion into every encounter. Strangers who hold the door open and let me cut in when traffic is heavy. When people question my decision to move, I can’t help but feel slightly offended on behalf of these wonderful people doing their best to augment all the good that is still here.
Regardless of where you live, we all have a choice about how we experience, and indeed shape, the world we live in. What we attend to – what we pay attention to – augments and affects our surroundings. As Hafiz writes – it is a naïve man who thinks we are not engaged in a fierce battle. So why not carry your heart through this world like a life-giving sun?
