EPISODE 31: Every Day Something More Important Calls For My Attention (Marie Howe's Prayer)
PRAYER
Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention – the downloads, the books-to-read, the collapsible
dog bowls I need to buy on Amazon.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?
My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
-Marie Howe
In this episode, I explore through the above koan the challenges of living with our fidgety and distractible minds. Why are our minds like this, and is there anything we can do to bring ourselves more into flow?
Joining me on this journey: Melville's Bartleby and his I-would-prefer-not-to mantra; Nir Eyal and his book Indistractible; a couple of philosophers (Bentham and Epicurus), as well as a few more poets (Kim Addonizio, Carlos Drummond Andrade, Sarah Lindsay, and Robert Burns writing a poem to a homeless mouse).
The physicist Jim Al-Khalili muses on universal entropy; psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (me-high cheek-sent-me-high) and William James muse on psychic entropy, and Jenny Odell does "nothing".
Transcript and shownote: http://stevewasserman.co.uk/and-every-day-something-more-important-calls-for-my-attention-marie-howes-prayer/
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