Sunday Morning Café was created to provide weekly psychological-spiritual reflection in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning. Regular readers will know that occasionally, an article will appear that requires a refill. I hope you’ll find that today’s offering of SMC is worth a second cup! Thanks for reading!
Last Saturday, Saint Louis woke up to an increasingly rare and precious weather event: snow! At 33 degrees, I knew that this three-inch accumulation wouldn’t be around long. I had to get moving! Sadly, my three usual slope mates have long since moved on to distant hills, leaving behind drawers full of outgrown snow suits, gloves, and boots. Fortunately, during COVID lockdown, my wife and I acquired a perpetual toddler who loves snow even more than chasing squirrels. Our dog, Winnie the Poodle (Standard, not Miniature), waited stoically by the back door while I donned the gear. The minute I slid that door open, she flew off the deck like a seven year-old boy belly-flopping onto his sled.
Now, my wife and I didn’t want to see Winnie bullied by any of her peers, so we’ve never trimmed her into one of those citified/prissy poodle-cuts you see on dog shows. No. To get the picture, imagine a Teddy bear-faced, two-and-a-half foot high white cloud zooming across an identically whitened park just beyond our backyard. Running full-tilt, visualize her floppy white ears pinned back by a surprising amount of G-forces generated by the “thdrum, thdrum, thdrum” of a thoroughbred-like sprint. Now imagine an occasional strategic drop of thehead allowing her nose to dip into the snow like a momentary plow, providing her mouth the opportunity to open and scoop uprandom payloads of mini snow cones!
As if a white dog frolicking in the white snow wasn’t cool enough, lo and behold, we came across a snow-white German-Shepherd. She was diligently occupied, chasing a red ball thrown by her mom and dad/employers. Winnie tried every which way to get that dog to play! She’d run up provocatively throwing her front paws down in front of that dog, dipping herhead playfully, and then leaping away, turning circles ‘round and ‘round that much larger pooch. She’d tear off in a sprint that shouted, “Bet you can’t catch me!” She’d circle back again and again. Her playful gestures…all unrequited…like a ball thrown invitingly from one boy to another that’s allowed to sadly drop to the ground…and…bounce…bounce…bounce…and then roll to a full…stop! Like his bosses, that unsmiling Sisyphus German Shepherd was all business! His sole purpose was the grim task of pursuing a red ball wherever it was thrown, only to repeat the process over and over again.
We left the park on our way to a local golf-course where kids have been sneaking in and sledding for decades. Along the way I talked it over with Winnie. I assured her, “It’s not you! Some dogs are just too well-trained for their own good.” I think she understood me, because when we got to the other side of the golf course fence, she didn’t waste a minute! She tore off “leaping the mountains, and bounding the hills.” Everything about her was 100-proof, pure distilled joy. Her mantra: SNOW! SNOW! SNOW! Her secondary mantra: FUN! FUN! FUN! No monk, including the Dali Lama, the Buddha, or Theresa of Avilla ever focused with such single-minded fervor!
A New Year’s Consideration
When I look back on the two main canine characters of this story, I wonder how many of us make room for Winnie Wisdom: single minded focus, and whole-hearted replenishment? In her recent book, Attention Span (2023), Professor Gloria Mark looks out at our contemporary landscape and concludes that the majority of us are more like the dogged German Shepherd of the story, habitually following a master’s orders…to our detriment. According to Doctor Mark, the red ball we’ve been trained to chase over-and-over again is tossed hither and yon by our online masters, be it work-related, or during our vanishingly reduced “down” time. Over the last thirty years, we’ve been trained by the likes of email, Slack, Facebook, Twitter, “X,” Tic Tok, texts, and even phone calls that can interrupt the most intimate out-to-dinner conversations.
The sobering conclusion she reaches is that the ever-increasing amount of time we spend online, damages a fundamental part of being human: our attention. Even when we’re off work, and think we’re the masters, the Internet is constantly throwing us the equivalent of a red ball that we’ve been trained to follow…even down rabbit holes. Since the 1980’s, the average adult attention span has decreased from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds! Before the Internet, professionals spent 30% of their worktime at a desk. The average professional now spends 90% of their time at their desks. Emails are checked, on average, 77 times a day. One of the costs experienced by so many of us is a kind of attentional splintering that leads to a fatigue akin to burnout. In my profession, we call this “dysthymia” (i.e. depression light).
In my own laboratory of contemplative practice, I’m so aware of how good I am at splintering my own attention with intrusive thoughts and little movies provided by my imagination. I find that the Internet is a turbo-charged firehose full of shiny objects that distract me from my Center where stores of Peace, Kindness, and Love are available to me, and through me.
Growing Winnie Wisdom
Today’s article shows up 77 days before Easter, 99 days before Passover, and 57 days before Ramadan. Having been raised Catholic, my New Year’s resolutions tend to start on Ash Wednesday, or on some ambitious years, 90 days before Easter. Whatever your religious background, would you consider treating your attention as something sacred to protect and reverence? The very incomplete lists of ideas offered below are meant to kick-start a conversation with yourself and others about what you might do to intentionally care for that deeply intimate part of yourself: your attention.
Practices for Attending to Your Attention
Winnie, like you and me, is an animal. As such, nature is her jam! For my money, nothing is more replenishing than twenty minutes in nature. Could you resolve to turn your computer and phone off for twenty minutes to go for a replenishing walkoutdoors, or in deep nature when possible?
Rote behaviors like knitting, crocheting, cross-word puzzles, cooking, etc.… also provide refreshing breaks from online workor web surfing. Paradoxically, some simple online games like Two Dots, or Wordle can provide downtime.
Can you be more mindful of fatigue when you’re working online? Try taking a break rather than pushing through it and settling for the diminishing returns that come from following the Internet’s red ball? Rather than taking your fatigue to Web surfing, could you take a twenty minute nap? If you are a boss or supervisor, could you encourage this kind of investment in the flourishing of your employees?
Do you have a daily habit of meditation or contemplation? The Pray as You Go podcast provides daily ten minutes of guided Christian meditation based upon the practice of Lectio Divina. Authors like Thomas Keating or Cynthia Bourgeault can teach you the simple discipline of Centering Prayer. It’s based in Christian monastic practice, but is easily adapted to other religious traditions, or even secular practice. Pema Chodronoffers a profoundly common-sense approach to Buddhist mindfulness practice as well. Adriene Mischler’s online yoga programs are easy to follow for newbies, and challenging enough for regular practitioners.