Julian Summerhayes

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
― Mary Oliver

Good morning.

Blimey, is it Thursday already? 

How time flies...

I'm off to see Brian (my father-in-law) this morning; yesterday, he was a little confused but I'm hopeful with the addition of a new method of pain relief that, when I see him today, he'll have slept better which will help him with his speech and recognition of things. Then again, it won't matter how he is: the important thing is that I go and see him.

How's your week been? Busy? Quiet? Same as?

One thing that I keep reading about, which I find chilling and worrying in equal measure, is the talk of mass redundancies and high, very high levels of unemployment. My heart goes out to all those people and their families affected or likely to be affected. It's long time ago since I was last unemployed, but it's savage on the soul and our sense of self-worth. I hope this doesn't come to pass, but something tells me otherwise.

ours is a life of distraction.
rarely, if ever, do we lend our attention to one thing
in substitute to something else.

in essence, attention is parsed out
— it's almost kaleidoscopic.

and, in my humble view, that means:

we never see the full beauty of what's in front of us
we listen more to the voice in our head than what's around us, and
we miss so very much.

what does it mean to pay attention?

what does it mean?