attention
But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Farnam Street • This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio)
Here is an overt premise. There is just no way that 2004’s reelection could have taken place—not to mention extraordinary rendi-tions, legalized torture, FISA-flouting, or the 6
David Foster Wallace • Deciderization 2007—a Special Report
David Foster Wallace
Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter. Such openness and empathy M. had in abundance, and gave away freely... I was in my late twenties and early thirties, and well filled with a sense of my own thoughts, my own presence. I was eager to address the worl... See more
Maria Popova • Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means and Her Moving Elegy for Her Soul Mate
from the writer Howard Rheingold: “Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.”
nytimes.com • Opinion | Michael Goldhaber, the Cassandra of the Internet Age - The New York Times
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
Farnam Street • This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio)
Understanding comes only when we let go of our self and allow the other to grab our full attention. In order for the reality of the other’s self to fully invest us, we must first divest ourselves of our own selves.
Robert Zaretsky • Simone Weil’s Radical Conception of Attention
“An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer,”
Maria Popova • How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love
"When everything is readily available and consumable, contemplative attention is impossible." (Byung-Chal Han, Vita Contemplativa)
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race"-the constant gnawin... See more