The idea of Focus

In my current setting this is unsettling and raises many questions. To focus is to choose. But, if you have made up your choice you are not exploring other things which means you may not have made the right choice. The context is not buying a shampoo because that is where the paradox of choice comes in and people spend hours online without deciding, the context is life decisions.

For most part - deadline pushes you to make a choice, a college admission deadline makes us decide the college which our children go to. What if we do not have a deadline, will we go on trying new things or will we exhaust and choose ? 

For many who are lucky, serendipity plays a big role, being in the right place at the right time can make the choice for you and those who are unlucky, mother nature, or a decision made somewhere in the echelons of corporate makes the choice for you.

Some really don’t care.

This is what Jiddu Krishnamurthy has to say on  attention “As we said, we ought to consider what it means to be attentive. This may be the clue to a harmonious existence. As things are, the intellect, the whole activity of the brain, which is thinking, dominates our existence. This brings about contradiction, peculiar behavior in us. When only one part of our whole being is dominant, it will inevitably bring about neurotic behavior. Attention is awareness of this dominance of intellect without acting on the instinctive urge to control it or to allow emotion to take its place. This awareness brings about subtlety, clarity of mind. 

There is a difference between concentration and attention. Concentration is to bring all your energy to focus on a particular point. In attention there is no point of focus. We are very familiar with one and not with the other. When you pay attention to your body, the body becomes quiet, has its own discipline; it is relaxed but not slack and it has the energy of harmony. When there is attention there is no contradiction and therefore no conflict.”

I agonized over these lines yesterday so could not finish my post. K does that to me (and many of us) always. It’s his way of pushing you to find your own meaning. Some one had commented that he is harsh / rough and difficult to understand whereas Si Sri is much softer / easy - because he gives you an answer, K does not. 

Focus / Concentration is what I (many of us) do when I go to work.I focus completely on getting to the office, doing my meetings with all sincerity, completing my work and coming back - the dominant role is played by intellect or thinking. 

Attention is when I am cooking or running. Yes both of them have a goal but there is harmony in the head - heart and hand / legs when I am doing it and my attention is complete - all your senses are alive - I smell the food, taste the food, see that it looks beautiful. 

Circling back to my original question? Why is a break year (or a longish break) so crucial ? 

When we work our mind gets hardwired to focus and it’s difficult to get away from that circle. It’s embedded deep, even when u take a break - the pre break work / prep and the low of coming back and the stress of the pending work sucks you back with double focus. This is a pattern. Just like a circadian rhythm, this is a pattern which all of us fall into. Many people love it and they should enjoy it as long as it lasts. See TED talk: Danger of a single story (link below).

A similar story plays out after 12th, when we were looking for admissions for Joyee most of her batch mates children had a vague notion of what they want to do - one of the best things which I saw when the new set of colleges - Ashoka, Kriya & Plaksha who understand this and give complete flexibility to students in choosing the subject. They can choose the subjects, do projects, have a mentor who will guide the child on the projects and counsel her on what the application of what they are learning and the future may hold for them. It’s expensive and extends the study period but it sets the direction clear. 

Coming back to ME - it has been 2 months and I am still learning to defocus and just experience activities so I write a lot, shoot photographs (put out the story it whispers in my mind), cook, walk, run, travel, listen to long podcasts which dwell deep into the life of a person. I recently joined a painting class - to build my attention. I am still learning. 

It takes time. 

Focus is great. Attention is Bliss.

Postscript:

Read the full note on awareness by Jiddu Krishnamurthy here: https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/chapter-41-awareness-brings-about-subtley-clarity-mind 

See this TED talk ‘Danger of a single story’ by one of my favorite authors: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Slowing Down

Did you know that it take 1mnt 45 seconds to heat the boiled water in your gas vs 45 seconds in the microwave.

1. Did you know that to cook a meal for 2 - a basic sabzi, dal & rice (where you are cooking looking at the you tube and making the sabzi) it for the first time take 1 hr all inclusive.

2. Did you know that, when you water the plant and touch the soil in your small piece you feel that you have touched a larger being and feel a connection - Really you can?

3. Did you know that you can buy groceries, biscuits without plastic - like 30 years back ?

4. Did you know that you will get paid if you give plastics out to an organization who will help you recycle it. 

I didn’t. 

The answer to all the above was convenience & reason today we need convenience is because we don’t have time. The reason we don’t have time is because roads are blocked / broken and at times filled with water and we have to travel to the office and that would take an hour or more. If you don’t go to the office you are hooked on to Teams call for the same amount of time. You want to reward yourself in the evening or on the weekend - so you binge watch (i can’t) have a drink, go out, order in - but wait there is no ice - no prob - you will get it in 15 mnts - thanks to Blink It.

 

I didn’t live by many of the things I mentioned above in italics all the time but I did a few things some time. But, it’s true I discovered the answers to all the 5 questions in the last 2 months. I am still trying to find creative ways of using time meaningfully in my 2nd Innings which is, after I took an early retirement - refusing to run the meaningless race.

 

When you slow down,the first thing you discover is that there is a lot of time which is such a luxury - but it takes time to get used to it. You are so used to being busy and multi-tasking that you feel like a student who is caught cheating in his exam. You have this constant urge to do something - you need some goals, some milestones to feel worthy. 

 

How can someone not do anything? This is the expression I get when they see a guy with black hair who has retired. I used to feel very insecure when I said(say) - I don’t know - Am figuring out? It’s a kind of break year for me. You know I want to do sustainability but I also want to do photography, paint, go to Japan & meet Murakami. Before I can finish - I can hear it “He is nuts? He is worse than my 12th class son”

     

I continue walking & when I see the next person approaching I adjust my volume and start listening to Kabir - Ud Jayega Haans Akela….

Ode to Columnists

When we embrace change, it is always followed by a churn. It can seem hard and confusing. We may worry and begin to second guess ourselves. Wise leaders recognise that transitions are hard. They create space for uncertainty and chaos. It is the dark tunnel that eventually leads us towards the light. Stay committed to the purpose and give it time for the fog to clear. These lines are from Natasha Budhwar whose columns I read with a lot of interest in Mint Lounge. Thanks to Amit and his circle of friends and his podcast that I heard her speak (for the first time) on his show Seen & Unseen. 

This was one column I would look forward to every Sunday - I still remember 1 particular article which talked about turning 50 and re-reading it I felt like someone had taken a pen and transcribed what was there in my mind in the most beautiful and poetic way, It's very rare that someone can speak to you and arouse this feeling of friendship without being there. I remember because I turned 50 and I had pasted the cutting on the door of my cupboard which I used to open every day. There were portions of it I had highlighted and dressing up getting ready, I would just read those lines and leave my single room cubby hole in Mumbai.

Staying alone away from my family for a long time the cutting was like a friend who was there, a kind of reminder that said - this loneliness, this struggle, it’s worth it. 

Another columnist who I go back and keep reading is Game Theory by Rohit Brijnath. This is what he wrote on Practice and on Pete Sampras’s retirement. “The practice arena (Court 16 where he would practice)is a factory of repetition,a polishing workshop and it can be boring but it’s also a privilege. He is playful and purposeful, all flick & whip,mobile and still. In matches they would do super slo-mo shots and we could see his head still, eyes tracking the ball on to his racket. An expressive Federer searching for precise self is unforgettable. He quotes a famous choreographer - Practice means to perform, over and over again, in face of all obstacles, the act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the person desired.”

Comparing a game with choreography and it’s importance in sports is an arc which you can cross as visuals of an orchestra or ballet floats in front of you or Maradona dribbling past defender and scoring a goal or Pele coming up at the right time to predict the ball and hit it into the goal. This is magic which we can see but writing it down - that’s the power which columnists need to have for their readers to be true fans. 

Book is a long read - we all have our time slots, cuddling in bed in rajai, sitting in the winter sun (being winter it is evoking these images in me), you have to get into the plot and remember what you read and what you thought would happen etc. It’s like a sapling which grows and becomes a creeper which is slowly spreading on your balcony net. A book is like a creeper which grows on you as you keep reading. 

A column is a fast read, a slower version of browsing. To hold the attention of the reader till the end is a challenge which makes it like a T 20 game vs a 1 day. It’s a lifetime of learning (in sports for Brij & psychology & visceral observation in case of Natasha) which the columnist uses to put forward his / her opinion in front of an unknown audience. 

I believe it’s an amazing work of art & practice which the columnists do week after week and helps us in giving words to our thoughts which lie buried in our heart or mind. 

To me and I think to many others - the column gives meaning to otherwise a mundane day.

Postscript:

Listen to the podcast here:

https://seenunseen.in/episodes/2022/10/31/episode-301-natasha-badhwar-lives-the-examined-life/ 

Some articles here: https://www.tribuneindia.com/columnist/natasha-badhwar-81 

Subscribe her to substack here:https://natashabadhwar.substack.com/