My mind is a cluttered place.
Pondering whatever coding challenge I was last working on; playing prioritization Tetris with my work task list; daydreaming about the video game I’m in the middle of; daydreaming about the video game I quixotically think I’ll someday make; mentally drafting my next blog post (here it is!); wondering what’s on the news sites, wondering if I have any new email (I’d better interrupt what I’m doing to check!); looking forward to the evening’s TV or board game; weighing workplace dilemmas and parenting dilemmas and extended family and friends’ concerns; rehearsing my opinions on the latest political news (with an imaginary interlocutor who always finds me persuasive); occasionally remembering to pray; maybe thinking about sex or the Roman empire.
And that’s before considering the distractions I surround myself with. In my pocket is my smartphone, which with a few taps can access any of two billion websites. I’ve given it permission to interrupt whatever I’m doing, whenever I’m awake (with the exception of a carve-out on Sunday mornings). It’s so effective a lure that studies suggest that it can reduce my effective intelligence just by sitting there. I can typically resist while I’m driving, but others aren’t so fortunate: smartphone use while driving claims maybe one life per day in the US1, with research suggesting that people persist in phone use while driving because phones are so habit-forming, and ignoring or going without a phone is so anxiety-inducing, that they allow themselves to be distracted despite recognizing the dangers.
My personal computer is a MacBook Air M1. It’s a fantastic machine: lightweight (2.8 pounds), never loud or hot (unlike other laptops I’ve used), excellent battery life. But convenience is a double-edged sword – at home, it’s nearly always within arm’s reach, and it’s not uncommon for me to multitask a family conversation with some light web browsing or email.
It’s a wonder I have any mental energy left for those around me.
The New Testament has a lot to say about how we Christians are supposed to treat one another – be at peace with one another (Mk. 9:50), be of the same mind (Rom. 12:6), bear with and forgive (Col. 3:13), confess sins (James 5:16), serve (Gal. 5:13), greet (1 Pe. 5:14), bear burdens (Gal. 6:2), encourage (1 Thess. 5:11), spur on (Heb. 10:24), pray, (James 5:16), be hospitable (1 Pe. 4:9). To do any of these, we first have to see one another, pay attention to one another.
Paying attention to someone else, setting aside your own distractions and pausing your own mental agenda to give them your focus, is the first step toward showing them love.
Numerous influencers, online articles, and writers such as Marie Kondo and Joshua Becker talk about decluttering and minimalism as a way of getting our physical possessions under control. (It’s a reflection on our society’s wealth and consumerism that too many material goods, rather than material want, is a challenge that so many of us face.) But there’s also a decluttering of the mind: being mindful of the distractions we allow into our lives, not letting our thought lives get so full of us that it leaves no room to give energy and focus to those around us.
In Philippians 2:6-11, Paul’s great hymn to Christ, he says that Christ “emptied himself.” This is a divine mystery, and one which theologians have discussed and debated for centuries. But it’s possible for the analysis of that mystery to distract from the fact that we, too, are called to empty ourselves (Philippians 2:5) – to remove from our minds and lives the clutter of our own distractions and agendas so that we can pay attention to others.
French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil made this connection. As described by Megan Dent:
Attention here is not an abstract meditative practice… It involves an emptying of one’s own egotism, fear, power, and presumption.
“Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object,” [Weil] wrote. “Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate it.”
Thus conceived, attention is an imitatio Christi: It emulates Christ in his self-sacrificing love. When God created the world, he restricted himself to make space for creation. When Christ died on the cross, he emptied himself for the sake of humankind. To pay attention is to, as far as humanly possible, retreat from the self to make space for the other person, idea, or desire, perhaps most especially when that “other” is someone or something we’d rather not confront: our ideological enemy, our political foe, or verifiable events that don’t conform to our understanding of the world.
Pay attention to those around you. Set aside your distractions – close the laptop lid or tablet cover, turn off your notifications, leave the phone in another room. If you’re talking with someone, treat that conversation as your top priority in that moment. Imitate Christ.
Footnotes
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Estimated; according to Forbes, distracted driving claims roughly 3000 lives per year in the US, and cell phone use is involved in 12% of all accidents. ↩