Paying Attention

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

~ "Sometimes" Mary Oliver, 2008

I can become a pendulum in January. I vacillate between relishing the freshness of a new calendar while jotting down lists of all I want to accomplish - and longing to just sit by a fire and read a book after all the December stimulation. Activity or rest. Resolutions or anti-resolutions.

There is no shortage of advice this time of year for reorganizing my house, remaking myself, and reevaluating my relationships. I’m not tempted by those headlines anymore. Maybe it’s my age, but I haven’t seen any genuinely new ideas in a long time. Although, there is one chart I saw somewhere that jumped out at me. It just read: MORE & LESS. It didn’t overwhelm me with recreating anything- just adding or subtracting from what’s already there. Interpret as you wish, but I see it as intentional living from my already defined values that has a shot at creating incremental change, as long as I am paying attention.

When I was writing Hey, White Girl I learned more about paying attention to the writing process: to words, to rhythm, to voice, to cadence. But I also learned to pay attention to my senses. You can be astonished by what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. My job was to sharpen my attention and make space for wonder so I could craft the words to tell about them. That telling became a story, which made ideas surface, which connected me to you. But telling is not confined to words. I think Mary Oliver was instructing us to connect- in whatever form of “telling” is ours.

In this January of a new year I wish for you the gift of paying attention, the joy of being astonished, and the courage to connect with your telling.