We Pay Attention

By Greg -
We're alert, I suppose, but that has a narrow connotation, implying a readiness to react to something that would upset our otherwise equanimity. One can be alert without paying attention, and often the two are at odds with one another. Also, we attend to the matter at hand by disregarding and deliberately ignoring things an outsider might regard as relevant. We dutifully complete tasks by disciplining ourselves not to be distracted by details. We believe that by dismissing irrelevancies we discern the general principle, the truth obscured by specificity. The world is filled with baubles, we say, and only the weak allow themselves to be enchanted by such random and meaningless detail as the way light refracts from water cascading over a waterfall, the ephemera of its cool mist, the color of twilight on arid rock, the low growl of well-fed bear.

But it's those who spend their days preening their principles and cataloging abstractions that are silly in my estimation. Their theories and hypotheses may be applied to effect, but the result will always be inferior to the spontaneous random beauty of chaos. They attend to their technology and the world-view its functions validate. They move in circles so small, they think they've seen it all. And they have no place for the wild and disordered world to which we give our full attention, un-self-consciously, un-self-interested. To the wild and undomesticated we offer our souls. To the conclusions, laws, principles, and certainties of your world-view, we offer our skepticism, our critical thinking, and our doubt.

Bucky Fuller trusted the universe; like a rabbit or a deer, he'd be as gracious in death as he was devoted to life's preservation. He belonged to the universe and was the steward only of his personal experience. His experience, he knew, was more valuable than any idea or object he might claim to possess. His personal experience was the only thing worth possessing because, unlike ideas or objects, experience cannot be gifted. And unexpressed ideas and un-gifted possessions are worse than useless. He trusted the universe and valued experience. And so, he devoted his life to the only thing he could do, fully and passionately, without disappointment: He paid attention.

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