Why I Started Pay Attention

There is a question I find myself returning to again and again:

What has your attention?

It sounds like a simple question.

But the longer I sit with it, the more I wonder if it might be one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves.

Our attention is constantly being claimed.

Our phones ask for it. Work asks for it. News asks for it. Other people's expectations ask for it. Our fears ask for it. Our responsibilities ask for it.

And often, without realizing it, we give our attention away.

We can move through an entire day responding to whatever is loudest, most urgent, or most demanding without ever stopping to ask whether those things are actually worthy of our attention.

I started Pay Attention because I wanted to create a small space in the midst of all that noise.

One reflection.

One question.

A few minutes to slow down and notice what is happening within us and around us.

But the podcast is also an extension of something I have come to believe through my work as a spiritual director.

Spiritual direction begins with attention.

Not fixing.

Not advising.

Not telling someone what their life should mean.

Attention.

When I sit with someone in spiritual direction, I am not there to provide answers to their deepest questions. I am there to listen carefully enough that we can begin to notice what is already unfolding in their life.

Sometimes that means paying attention to a longing that has been easy to ignore.

Sometimes it means noticing a grief that has never really been given space.

Sometimes it means becoming aware of a question that keeps returning.

Sometimes it means recognizing a source of joy, beauty, or meaning that has quietly been present all along.

The work is often subtle.

There may be no dramatic breakthrough.

Instead, something becomes a little more visible.

A person begins to hear themselves differently.

They recognize a pattern.

They become curious about something they had previously dismissed.

They begin to sense that their life might be asking something of them.

That kind of attention can be transformative.

And that is what I hope Pay Attention can offer in a different form.

I don't want the podcast to be another place where someone tells you how to live.

There is already plenty of that.

I don't want to offer a collection of answers that you are expected to adopt.

Instead, I want to create a space for questions.

Questions about meaning.

Questions about identity.

Questions about relationships, responsibility, suffering, vocation, mortality, spirituality, and what it means to live a good life.

Some of these questions may not have easy answers.

Some may stay with us for years.

I have come to believe that this is not necessarily a problem.

Perhaps some questions are not meant to be solved.

Perhaps they are meant to be lived.

That is part of what draws me to spiritual direction. I am less interested in helping people arrive at certainty than I am in helping them become attentive to their own lives.

Because our lives are always telling us something.

The challenge is that we are often moving too quickly to hear it.

So Pay Attention is an invitation to slow down.

To notice what is present.

To become curious about what is changing.

To listen for what may be asking for your attention.

And, perhaps most importantly, to remember that your life is worthy of being attended to.

I started this podcast because I believe that the quality of our lives is shaped, in part, by the quality of our attention.

What we repeatedly notice begins to shape what we value.

What we value begins to shape how we live.

And how we live, over time, shapes who we become.

So each week, I'll offer a reflection and a question.

Not as an expert standing outside your life.

But as another person trying to pay attention to his own.

Maybe something I notice will cause you to notice something in yours.

Maybe a question I am carrying will become a question you begin carrying too.

And perhaps, for a few minutes each week, we can practice something that has become increasingly difficult in our distracted world:

being fully present to the lives we are actually living.

That is why I called it Pay Attention.

Because before we can change our lives, we often have to notice them.

Before we can discern where we are going, we have to become attentive to where we are.

And before we can become someone new, we have to pay attention to the person we are already becoming.

What has your attention?

Maybe that's a question worth living with.