First, the monotony. Life in lockdown, for me and maybe for others, has made it frustratingly difficult to be distracted from whatever domestic and daily annoyances I have avoided addressing or resolving for the past thirty-some years. But the sudden rhythm of a quieter life meant those tensions\u2014unresolved frustrations, unhealthy communication habits, unspoken hopes\u2014have been harder to ignore. To my dismay, these daily realities kept coming up\u2026like, every day.<\/em> <\/p>\n The monotony, the small annoyances, the work calls that always starts three minutes late, the creaking of that chair, the single dish my husband leaves in the sink at the end of the night, the rehearsed and transactional ways we move through the day to \u201cget through them\u201d instead of enjoy, delight, or bask in them\u2014I worked hard to pay attention to all these habituated realities. <\/p>\n I kept thinking of Ernest Hemingway, who said we must write \u201chard and clear about what hurts,\u201d and wished to ask a follow-up question: sure, sir\u2014but how are we to attend, hard and clear, to what<\/em> bores<\/em><\/strong>?<\/em> About midway through this past year, I realized that if you stare at monotonous realities for long enough, you may go cross-eyed*\u2014a lesson we all learned ~the hard way~ from the back of the Teddy Grahams box back in the day. (*Or you might achieve enlightenment; in my case, it was the former.)<\/p>\n Where the monotony narrowed my field of vision, the disruptive nature of the pandemic seemed to zap my brain\u2019s capacity to make any sense of whatever I was staring at.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Which leads me to part two: the disruption. For all the ways my attention has narrowed, more or less, to the things at hand, it has also felt, simultaneously, like I can\u2019t quite focus on anything at all<\/em>. Where the monotony narrowed my field of vision, the disruptive nature of the pandemic seemed to zap my brain\u2019s capacity to make any sense of whatever I was staring at. Yes, I am still relying on the Teddy Grahams imagery. Go with it.<\/p>\n Attention fatigue. Exhaustion from the strain on my eyes and mind of focusing so long at the blurry sameness, trying to glean meaning from it day after day. Trying to attend to the things at hand despite the monotony and trying to attend to what matters most despite the disruption. <\/p>\n Friends of mine in the medical profession (though it may very well be true in other roles) tell me they\u2019ve been experiencing attention fatigue in an extreme way: such concentrated attending<\/em> to the needs of others that when they\u2019re finally \u201coff\u201d they all but collapse, as if holding their breath for the entirety of their shift. <\/p>\n Others, many who are parents and working from home with small babes and tots, talk about feeling that their attention is completely diffuse: never once quite<\/em> landing on a single object, idea, or person. Just flitting from one urgent scene to the next, with a mental list perpetually growing of things to do when the basket of laundry is set down and the timer goes off and the kids fall asleep (and so on). <\/p>\n In addition to simply naming these things (in case the articulation can help you gauge where you or your loved ones are at), I want to share something that\u2019s helped me figure out what to do about this attention fatigue.<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n I was reading a book of essays by Simone Weil, a 20th-century mystic, activist, and philosopher, whose writing on attention puts this short reflection to absolute shame. But who\u2019s judging. (Me, and maybe also Simone.) <\/p>\n I am thinking about attention as a mental faculty that\u2019s not just about cognitive understanding but about presence\u2014not just looking at something but taking it in<\/em>. And more importantly, that whatever I am trying to take in<\/em>, I am also trying to be taken in<\/em> by it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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