QUALITY OF DISTRACTION

June 1st, 2021

Any meaningful reprieve from the normal mental humdrum of living to reflect on the larger picture opens up a host of mostly unanswerable questions.  The so called ‘big topics’ come to mind, but they can leave a person feeling rather powerless because the practicalities of one’s life and situation and obligations is often very far removed from anything that looks like a direct impact on such big issues.  Be it something like climate change or feeding the hungry or somehow contributing to world peace in some kind of way.  These are so far removed from the issue of picking up kids, making appointments, getting to work on time and making sure the bills are paid.  The visit to the mental realm of larger issues is often brief in order to escape back to the safety of the humdrum.

All of it, no matter how large or small, meaningful or frivolous is a form of distraction.  Whether we stress over the results of child’s test score or the reality of world hunger, or even veg out to some new comedy special, all of it is a form of disengagement from the moment as it exists.  This isn’t a terrible thing, as long as we can manage to let all that distraction go from time to time and connect with the here and now as it exists without being lost in thought nor emotion.

But it’s equally detrimental to seek this state with the aim of making it permanent.  The distractions we litter our mind with do have important meaning, and some are far more important than others.

How we choose to be distracted when we aren’t intimately connected to the moment becomes the stuff and story or our lives.  Distraction almost wholesale regarded as negative.  If you’re distracted when what exactly should you be paying attention to?  The answer is just another distraction that’s somehow deemed to be more important.  So, it’s worthy to wonder: how good are your distractions?