Friday, February 16, 2007

How we pay attention

One of the biggest challenges when returning from a vacation is the immediacy of everyday demands and schedules that must be re-encountered, along with mounds of mail to be sorted, bills to pay, and so on. So you are penalized for the relaxation that you experienced while away, with a short period in which you try to catch up to your former self.

The other morning I woke up fully intending to blog about the transportation system in Costa Rica, but then life intruded and it never got done. So instead of the long, pithy essay I was going to write about it, I'll give you the extra short version: beware of the roads you improve, because they can lead to more tourism, which is a decidedly mixed blessing. Some of the Costa Rican roads I experienced close to the major ecological attractions are the worst I have seen anywhere in the world. They serve their purpose, which is providing access, but not to the hoards of people. It seems to be a rule in life these days: the beautiful places in the world are being loved to death by development and traffic.

Back to my post-vacation musing: it certainly does seem as though daily life quickly reasserts itself, with the half-life of travel memories fading rapidly by the minute. But the body seems to want to acknowledge the vast changes in scenery and diet, and so I am experiencing something like a sense of arrested development, not knowing entirely what to pay attention to next.

Prior to the trip I was feeling breathless with the speed with which more people are paying attention to environmental issues. The denizens of beaches, tour buses and hotels in Costa Rica and other vacation spots are paying attention to completely different things. The background chatter on the road is about logistics, beauty, expenses, opportunities, enjoyment. Who is to say that one thing or the other is what we should be paying attention to? What I know for sure is that we are what we pay attention to.

If you are in a situation like I am, where you have a choice about what you can pay attention to, rejoice! At times like these, when I am uncertain what to pay attention to, I return to the words of my favorite sages. In this case, the poet Rumi seems to capture a sense of what is necessary:

" When you do things from your soul,
You feel a river moving in you, a joy.
When actions comes from another section,
the feeling disappears.

Don't let others lead you. They may be blind,
or worse, vultures. Reach for the rope
of God. And what is that?

Putting aside self-will...

Don't insist on going where you think you want to go.
Ask the way to the Spring.

Your living pieces will form a harmony."

From RUMI: We are Three, Coleman Barks, trans.

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