Retiring with Satorial Splendor

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, has a very pretty cover in bright pinks and creamy roses.  It caught my attention.

Odell, artist, critic, writer and teacher, lives in Oakland, California.  I've spent the last couple of months in imaginary conversation with her, so thought-provoking is her book.  I think she'd be pleased that I started reading it six months ago, and just read the last sentence (and the lengthy Endnotes) today.  Clearly, I have read with attention.  I've picked up and put down this book so many times, but I think she'd be pleased that I took a "think-pause" to consider her ideas and my own response to Doing Nothing!

For example, a few Saturdays' ago, I was "mid-read" but felt the urge to respond to the text, in the moment as it were.  It was entirely appropriate because this book reads like a conversation.  It weaves in and out of so many interesting thoughts and ideas that, at times, there is nothing else to do but to put the book down and think.  

The latest bit that has caught my attention is the chapter entitled ironically, Exercises in Attention.  "The natural tendency of attention, when left to itself, is to wander to new things," say Odell, quoting William James, 1890's treatise, The Principles of Psychology.  I am an habitual "attention wander" - my family calls these my "squirrel moments."  I suddenly, and seemingly out of no where, say something and everyone around stops and looks at me with that "Eh? What?" look.  

The truth is my mind is like a playground of ideas.  Ideas bouncing off each other, opening up thoughts that birth others, each joined together by a slender silver thread.  I am aware of a constancy of thoughts actively living in my head.    According to Odell and James, there is no squirrel randomly bouncing around; it's simply the mind being pulled, attracted away by other powerful impressions.  Sometimes these impressions are so powerful, I have to pause.  It is these moments where I become still, focused, intentional and attentive.  There is power in those moments for it is where you spend these moments that becomes who you are.

Living a purposeful life is really about keeping it fixed on things that matter.  In a world of social media and the replacement of face-to-face gatherings that inspire deep and meaningful connections between people, we are increasingly satisfied with the verbal equivalent of drive-by shootings - popping into someone's virtual space, dropping an atomic bomb masked as an "opinion" and moving on to find fresh targets.  Odell's solution is to step outside the alluring temptation to "like" and move on, and instead, to step inside relationships with self, with others and with the world around us - to intentionally connect and to be present in the moment.  

Odell has done the heavy lifting to support her revolutionary ideas and has convinced this reader that, post-pandemic, I have the chance of a life time - to reconnect to a slower pace and to stand still for a moment or two and let the mind wander.  You never know where you'll end up!