As telecommunication becomes faster, attention spans become shorter.
I heard someone say the above words years ago, and I realize today how true they’ve become as Twitter and text epitomize the quick, shortened soundbite and AI threatens to replace critical thinking in schools, while at the same time novels such as War and Peace or The Magic Mountain are now read by less than one percent of the population.
In my own life, too, I see my attention shifting from one thing to the next with the speed of a hummingbird buzzing from blossom to blossom. I am aware that ten, or even five, years ago I’d be willing to wait a few minutes as a website came up. Now I’m impatient if it takes longer than five seconds. Focusing was something I once did effortlessly, where now I must consciously bring my attention back to the object of concentration and hold it there. My goal is not to blame technology but to be aware of how these subtle, some say insidious, changes affect me and others around me.
Human others. For while I know the detriment technology has on our natural world—data centers using up water and electricity, cell towers and electromagnetic fields killing and altering birds and bees—my dogs have not taken up an Instagram account, nor do they spend time checking email and texts. Their lives are full and rich, and they don’t ask for more, the occasional cookie notwithstanding. They focus easily on the task at hand, rarely if ever, multi-tasking. When they sleep in the small patches of sun, they sleep deeply. I know they dream but I don’t think they lie down at night with minds racing about all they must do. When they hunt, they do so with a single-minded focus that is enviable. And when they play, they throw themselves into it with everything they have.
Over the summer, as the bunnies took up residence in our yard, feasting on clover and greens from the garden with great glee, Paisley took up monitoring them with a focus that verged on obsession, really. She’d jump from the bed in the early morning, running just in front of me enough so I’d trip to avoid her. And after being let out to the fields, she’d hunt all day if I let her.
Now it is fall, cooler evenings, a special change to the air that I rejoice in each year, and the squirrels are equally, almost obsessively, focused on gathering and storing up nuts. Sparkle has taken up this line of work: squirrel patrol, with a focus/obsession equal to Paisley’s. The chase is all important for rarely if ever do they catch their prey and for this I’m grateful. I like to think they’ve taken a page from my pacific philosophy of life, but perhaps the truth lies closer to older hips and legs.
How easily they focus; how intense their absorption. On this clear autumn afternoon, as the cool of evening moves our way, I sit in the last shards of lowering light, and they sit beside me staring up with intensity. What are they thinking about? What do they want? Food, it’s time for dinner. Always food. Yet even more than that, they want love. I turn to them and focus. Now that I can give them. That I can do easily. Love, it takes so little effort to focus on love.