Summer Shorts Vol. 2: How to Pay Attention

Leave early. Make connections. Spend all your time. Stand back.

What: An essay that is exactly 500 words.

Why: I had the idea that limiting myself to 500 words would reduce the weird pressure I bring on myself about writing, while I’m busy with the final stages of releasing a book in October.

How: Intros and footnotes don’t count towards the 500. I write in a Google Doc and don’t cheat on the word count, and then I paste it into a Substack draft and add footnotes and the intro.

Here’s Vol. 2: How to Pay Attention

Leave earlier than you need to so you can go slower than you’re used to. Wave at every passing car, every person you don’t know and the few that you do, and notice that some instinctively wave back. Imagine them wondering who you are and why you are waving. Imagine them paying more attention as they drive the winding river road, putting their phones down and not dying.¹

Leave space, leave time, leave room.

Make eye contact with the person who held the door, because they didn’t have to.² Make eye contact and smile as a thank-you. Do not merely walk through open doors as if it is your right, as if a door will always open, as if there never was a locked door for you and you never had to wait and never accidentally pushed instead of pulled.

Make connections. Make friends with strangers.

Spend time with children. Not merely in their presence but actually with them. I know, I know—the days are really long with your own children around and in and under everything you do. Or maybe the days are really long because there are no children, anymore or ever, under and into and around everything. But have you taken the hand of a toddler lately? Have you listened to a kid tell a story? Glory to God—there are always children willing to give you a tour of the world.

Spend all your time and save nothing.

Look small and large. See the world in three layers: at your feet, in front of your face, and above your head. In front of your face is where the most obvious stuff is but try the other layers (upon layers upon layers). Try crouching low, lying on your belly, using your phone’s magnifying tool. Turn off the tv the news feed the socials the endless information of deformation and be small, about-your-business and the things you can touch. Clean house. Touch grass and all that. Do little things and be ridiculously happy about it.

Try standing back, taking it all in, the panorama of everything from a distance. Paying attention is not only about minute details. Seeing the big picture is seeing many small things at once. If you’ve ever stood on a mountain or flown on a plane over your hometown, you might hopefully know the reason for staying involved, connected, mired in it. You might know the costs of paying attention, the bad and hopefully the good. Go far away and come home again.

Look small at home. Look large at the world.

Take pictures.³ Make your phone a camera that calls people. Frame something in the glass rectangle that really actually matters to you, that you want to look at and share. The best gift anyone has ever bought me is the digital picture frame that sits by my coffee pot and displays a constant flow of people I love and the things they love: flowers, dogs, rainbows, dancing at weddings.

Pay attention.

1. There have been two deaths in the last month, in two separate accidents, on the stretch of road between our house and the highway. It might sound dumb or insignificant but all I know to do is to wave a friendly hello at every car and hope it draws the driver’s attention back to the road and the humans on it.

2. A woman walked through a door held open for her the other day and didn’t even look at the person holding it, didn’t even smile and acknowledge it. There can be all kinds of explanations for that, but I just felt sad and the image has stuck with me.

3. The camera on my phone is cracked and all my photos have dark clouds and weird striations in them and getting it fixed will take time and money but man. I miss being able to take photos whenever I want.