I get distracted.
If you know me, you get that. If you married me, you knew that coming in. If I gave birth to you, you really know that.
Could I call it Attention Deficit Disorder? In the best sense of the terminology flung about so readily these days, I suppose so. Having worked thirty plus years in the field of education, I know that the diagnosis rarely means the inability to pay attention, but the tendency to pay attention to everything, all the time. I think of it more as being pulled, drawn in . . . every sensory input requires acknowledgement and so I hear all the conversations within earshot, I see the tiniest movement of that branch . . . WAIT! Do I smell cinnamon? The fabric of that cushion on the display sofa is just begging me to caress it with my fingers, nay . . . both hands.
Sometimes the world is just much too interesting to get all my focus on the very thing or person that I am supposed to or wish to be attending to. This blog for example. So, I have about four other tasks, all pleasant ones, on hold while I write this entry, and I am laughing at my confession to you thinking that you do this too, in some regard.
It's not pure procrastination nor lack of my muse visiting. Oh she visits, all right! When I want to sleep, drive, grocery shop, garden, have tea with a friend, she visits, unbidden and I write and write. But rarely on my blog, to my chagrin and to that of a few of my dear followers who I fear must have long forgotten and/or abandoned me. And who would blame them . . .?
Living in the moment with mindfulness and gratitude almost requires one to be sensorily driven. How could I forego the minutes scratching my dogs' silken ears for anything else? I have the liberty to do nothing besides listen to Andrea Bocelli's voice for a whole hour if I so choose. Why would I multitask and do several things badly when I can just stop and look? Look and see the indescribable deep coral rose colour of the poppies in the vase on the coffee table?
Distractions as some would call them are everywhere -- the internet, Facebook and Pinterest, phone calls and people in store lineups, photo opportunities in a ditch or orchard. Other people's babies in strollers, elderly faces with the wisdom of the ages on bodies bent by work and time; books, shops and photographs. I look at all the lighted windows down any road at night when we drive past, and wonder about the lives being lived in those houses. I don't want to miss any of it.
When I am brought back sharply at times from one of these moments, I'm often caught off guard by what else is happening, what someone has just asked me, or the cover rattling on a boiling pot that I've momentarily overlooked. How can all of this be happening at the same time? I want to concentrate on the smell of this fresh cut lemon. I want to feel and hear and taste it all. I want to will my eyes to take it all in, the beauty and the ugliness. To commit it to memory and savour it.
