A view that is so wide - Part 1
The competition for our attention
I am staring straight ahead
A view that is so wide
It’s gonna break
It’s like it holds me in its gaze
from the song Pana-vision on A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
TLE has suffered from a lack of attention - mine. What I thought would be a year off turned into a year of projects and obstacles. As I write those words, I realize that’s one way to sum up life. Each project has tasks on its path to completion and there are always going to be obstacles, challenges, distractions and attractions vying for your attention, potentially derailing you. How you manage your priorities and what you can achieve might help you understand what matters most.
When I told a friend how much I want to dive in and mark off items on my to-do list she said, about an item on her own, “but it’s just one more thing that competes for my attention…” It’s a funny thing that our families have to compete for our attention. Work culture in many societies puts a lot of pressure on us to strive, achieve and continuously ascend. I have repeatedly chosen my family over all else in this last year. I would love to say that it has been easy.
I’ve written before about the idea of both/and - the complexity of holding multiple thoughts or perspectives when considering a situation. I think it’s necessary but boy, is it hard sometimes. So yes, I have chosen my family, but my dissertation is suffering, this Substack is suffering, and my professional credibility might be suffering but my family is better than ever. The math seems easy and even though I think having it all is malarkey, it would appear I am suffering personal cognitive dissonance.
Education for life
My youngest and I just got back from a trip to Toronto and I am just getting over a pretty intense bout of jet lag. What a wonderful thing airport assistance is, she’s on crutches after twisting her knee - I know, I couldn’t make it up if I tried - and it was a lifesaver to have support. I have a newfound respect for carers who push wheelchairs and offer all kinds of support to people with limited mobility or other differences that limit independence. It was exhausting and I am pretty sure my jet lag was worse for it.
Every type of work I have done or role I have occupied brings new perspectives. How much I have gleaned is reliant on my interest, my ability to attend, and a suite of skills that I’ll call observation and of course, effort. There’s more at work for sure but those things are basic. In our travels, we dealt with three kinds of wheelchairs, ground staff and locations (airports with varying degrees of accessibility). I had to use these skills to manage and concentrate.
I paid attention to what others were doing what was working or not. I was hypervigilant about our proximity to others, for their safety and to protect her leg. I think the experience made us both more empathetic and broadened the range of what we will notice in the future. I don’t know that being a Montessori teacher has sharpened my coping skills. I’m sure age and experience have a lot to do with it. I am, however, certain that being a Montessori teacher has given me a filter through which I observe and analyze processes reflexively.
When I’m with friends and family I try to limit speaking Montessorish or Montessorese. I have heard Montessori professionals try to convert others or sing the praises of the method and who am I kidding? I’ve done it myself! What might start as an innocent remark can snowball into a lecture or worse judgment. But I did have some fun conversations where people were genuinely interested and I responded to their questions. One relative said, “Kav, where are the teachers that have time for that? What you’re describing isn’t realistic!”
I have been dying to talk/write about attention and concentration since then but didn’t want to bore the pants off my family who hasn’t seen me in years! And now the segue to education.
It is the most important single result of our whole work. The transition from one state to the other always follows a piece of work done by the hands with real things, work accompanied by mental concentration. 1
Interest, attention, concentration
I haven’t been listening to podcasts lately, there has been so much to do and I have found that I cannot attend to them sufficiently to synthesize lines of thought into coherent webs. I am interested. I try to pay attention and I do but I am struggling to concentrate.
That’s where my friend’s comment about projects competing for her attention turned on a light bulb. Her speech bubble then connected with my family member’s speech bubble about how unrealistic Montessori is. I thought yeah, it’s not impossible but it’s hard because there is so much competing for our attention. For everyone’s attention.
Lots of stuff catches our interest. We give fleeting attention to the streams of content but what do we engage with meaningfully? From education ministers to textbook writers, curriculum advisors to teachers, parents to children - we are all struggling to pay enough attention and to see things through. The hummingbird approach is not serving us well. We receive and sometimes benefit from so much information. Unvetted and coming in torrents and waves. It is so hard to focus, to know where to give focus and to know what content is trustworthy. I wonder sometimes, if I had attended a Montessori school, would I be better at vetting these questions?
My dissertation has won the attention competition today and truly, it deserves to win. When my oldest was very young I used the Vltava River to impress upon her how time works. It keeps on moving, just like the water. I feel very much like the river is moving without my dissertation. Time to slow my breath and focus so that I can move with intention and cross items off that to-do list.
Sometimes I feel like we have to slow down and do less to accomplish more. Do you agree? Do you see it differently?
I’ll pick up that thread in the attention/concentration discussion next time. Until then take care of yourselves.
Montessori, Maria, The Absorbent Mind (Kindle Edition) Montessori Pierson Publishing House, 2016, p. 197.
Kavita, I DO agree that "sometimes we have to slow down and do less to accomplish more." But then the question of how are we measuring "more" and "less" in the accomplished pile at the end of the day?
And reading my words about to-do list items "competing for my attention" made me reflect on how much this formulation came from my reality of mostly working from home. While there is an office at home there is no workplace to go back and forth to each day to help me transition from one reality and it's to-do list to another.