RECALCULATING
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Anything distracts the squirrel or my active imagination.
We need brakes, caution flags, speed bumps, and red octagonal signs, don’t we, so we don’t lose sight of what is essential to living-out our wishes, our plans, to clearly see and avoid that (or who) which could derail us from those plans and possibilities.
Focus.
One thing at a time.
Most essential and pressing first.
Secondary things next, boil-down, reduce the remainder …
Concentrating enough, excluding all other issues from my mind – I remain so focused, deeply engrossed. Could be cooking something extraordinary or pulling an all-nighter on a captivating project – exhausting and/or exhilarating to the distraction and exclusion of everything else. That happens some days at my writing table, deeply mired in weaving paragraphs, pages, and passages. I’ve found less often this year, but it’s returning.
In singularity of focus, absence of distraction, deep mind-plunge – deep end of the pool without concern for my inability to swim. Lately, I’ve mislaid my compass, crowded landscape of issues, worries, tasks, and challenges, writing and publishing projects, and pursuit of the next opportunity on a landscape with a shortage of low-hanging fruit in anyone’s work …
Which brings me back to this issue of focus, what it takes to stay on-focus, and recognizing what it takes to redirect me. If something was important enough to be last week’s primary focus or life-plan, why should I allow something or someone new showing up this week to take me in some disparate direction?
Yes, we get to pick our spots, but if nothing can distract or divert us in a contrary-minded direction – are we really open-minded, or just like thinking we are?
We all MUST deal with the whole world, but on our best day, most of us are mostly capable of managing our own situation, and not a lot more. We just have to do it with some new rules about who we touch, how close we get, having a mask in very jacket and coat, a mindset for sanitation, and ritual handwashing.
Changing our mind is everyone’s freedom – but changing our life, that’s a recalculation.
Life, it turns out, is not a calculation or a predicament.
Life is what happens today.
Then it’s over.
If we are lucky, we repeat the next day.
When I allow distraction, redirection, is that a miscalculation, or would the greater blunder be to not have the presence of mind to leap at an extraordinary opportunity?
Reader feedback:
Brings to mind, lead, follow, or get out of the way, SB, Calgary, AB
“ Diapers too? That depends.” Accidental or clever?, DP, Calgary, AB
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