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.

Initial thoughts about beauty

In conversations over the past few days, I noticed some statements people made about beauty.

• An interior designer said that beauty can improve the world.
• A teacher said that exposure to beauty could reliably do more good than acts of social action.
• A priest quoted Pope John Paul as saying: "It is...necessary to create lifestyles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine...choices..."

Digging a little into my remembered store of aphorisms from the sufi poet Rumi, I remember one in particular: "Let the beauty you love be what you do." It's a particularly apt aphorism for an artist, who is presumably charged with creating beauty. But I need more proofs.

I see nature as being able to create beauty that is so exquisite in its detail. The beautiful array of colors and variety of pattern on a beach far exceed what an artist could create. I look at what nature has created, and feel the inadequacy of what I can create with paint and brush.

Another problem is the tendency in our culture to turn beauty into a commodity. The artist may enjoy the creation of beauty as a process--but the commodification of that created thing is not lovely. A philanthropist in our town is spending millions of dollars buying art which is loaned out to a local museum. The paintings being purchased have an intrinsic value because of their beauty, and an extrinsic value as investments. I calculated that one of the paintings on recent exhibit, a Monet, was purchased for about $2 million. As I gazed at this painting, was I engaged in worship of beauty or wealth?

Beauty is a subjective thing. History and commerce elevate beautiful people, beautiful destinations, and beautiful art. But when the philosophers speak of pursuing truth, beauty and goodness, what they really must be referring to is the human capacity to appreciate beauty in many contexts. When we can see the beauty in the face of an elderly friend, in the pattern of worn paint on the side of a building, and in a teenager's quirky sense of humor, we feel love, interest and connection. When we make a choice to focus on ugliness: political corruption, pollution, people's shortcomings, we disempower our goodness. An aphorism that I know to be true from my work as an artist is: we are what we pay attention to. It must be that by paying attention to beauty we awaken love and connectedness to others.

This is the first time I have tried to understand why beauty must be important. I still remain unconvinced that the beauty I have the capacity to create can actually serve others.