Am I Paying Attention? - Being Aware

Are we paying attention?  We think that we are.  We would tell others that we are.  We lead ourselves to believe that we've embraced opinions or points of view because (in our minds) we really took the time to understand the dynamics related to them.  We would say that we're informed, probably more than any generation before us.  We listen and we read and we analyze, so we say and so we think.  But are we paying attention?

Too often we're not paying attention at all.  Not really.  We're frequently embracing something because someone we admire is embracing it.  We're standing up for some cause because it looks good on the surface and we all too readily assume that if it looks good on the surface, everything underneath the surface must be good as well.  We're invested in something because a whole bunch of other like-minded people are invested in it, so with so many people invested it must be worthwhile.  The fact of the matter is, we're not paying attention.  And maybe what we need to do today is to pay attention to the fact that we're not paying attention and begin to recognize the incredible problems that that continues to create.