For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
Evelyn Underhill
For a few months at the end of 2025, this column focused on improving focus. This month we can move up into an even higher form of mindfulness that helps us be more truly present in the present moment. This can be as simple as just paying more attention to who we’re with, where we are and what we’re doing.
While this sounds simple, it can sometimes be very challenging to pay attention to our children, our partners or our jobs. When we aren’t feeling too busy or overwhelmed, we generally find ourselves able to interact well with others and still do what needs to be done. But when we do feel like there is too much going on and too many things to do, it can be hard to pay proper attention to the people and things all around us.
A poet named Mary Oliver wrote: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” She is right that paying attention can sometimes feel like work, more so than something that comes naturally to us. The word “endless” feels a little heavy to me but making consistent choices to turn our full attention to our people, our tasks and the beautiful things around us gives us so many benefits that after we develop the habit of paying attention it doesn’t feel like work anymore.
Being more present in the present helps us feel more comfortable and clearer as we move through life one moment at a time. This doesn’t mean that planning is wrong, but focusing more on the future or the past, rather than the present, can make us feel fragmented and frantic.
Attention is created with intention. When we set our minds to give undivided attention to someone or something for a period of time, our relationships improve, we become more productive and we feel more peaceful.
While learning to focus our attention is a discipline, over time it becomes easier and begins to feel more natural.
Try taking a moment right now to see if you can feel your own presence, who you are deep within, apart from what you do or how you think others may see you. You’ll feel your own presence in what we sometimes refer to as the “gut” more so than the mind. Notice how your mind calms down when you settle into yourself more.
Most people in our modern Western society live primarily or even exclusively in the mind. This can lead to our distractible, stressed minds running our lives instead of us being able to remain calm and use our minds as tools.
How do we do this? We can begin by noticing the difference between living from our minds and living from our true, deeper selves. It can take some time to cultivate the habit of switching from living in our heads to living from our hearts. Since it’s “happy hearts” month, let’s start there and next month we’ll look some more at how we can learn to pay attention.
