Paying attention

There is a story in almost every paper in Mumbai today about how not paying attention is being paid attention to. It’s all about mind-wandering. And it is, the researchers studying it insist, too common to be ignored any longer. It is more than just forgetfulness and not due to a problem like ageing or senility, but just the mind taking off to parts known and unknown, exploring side streets and little gallis on the way, finally perhaps coming back to the road that was originally to be travelled.

My mind wanders all the time. It begins with a multitasking mentality, one that comfortably has four windows open on the computer, each with a completely different word file to be played with – edited or written or just read. I hop between writing this blog and plugging my weary way through readers’ letters to cleaning up an astonishingly long document for a magazine project to an edit on, this time around, paying attention to not paying attention. But just because I am doing so much, all at the same time, it does not mean that my mind is not focussed on any one of them, just that my mind is wandering into and out of each one. It is not so much an attention deficit, as an attention divisive action. I am, honestly, truly, genuinely, paying attention to all of it.

Life is like that for me in every aspect. Sundays are the epitome of that phenomenon called multitasking, aka that ability that allows the mind to hop from one to the other through to a tenth matter at hand, each as important and as necessary as any. There will be four or five books in various stages of my reading them all over the house. There will be two cutting boards on the kitchen platform holding different vegetables in different stages of processing for different recipes. There will be laundry going on, even as clothes are being sorted and folded away. And even as all this happens, Small Cat will be clamouring for attention as Father goes through his shopping list and a friend calls to catch up on our lives and tell us what she is doing. So it is not surprising that in the middle of any one conversation, my mind takes off to a warm and fuzzy place where there is no need to answer, no need to make any decisions and no need at all to speak…

It is not surprising that the mind wanders, especially when doing all things routine or dreary. It is the mental equivalent of knitting or shelling peas while watching a soap opera on television. Or talking on the phone while shopping for onions. Or playing with Small Cat while dusting the bookshelf. Or dreaming wonderful dreams while reading email…

Hey, what was I saying? Sorry, I lost track. Guess I was not paying attention….