How does my attention change when I feel truly seen?

or when I see someone else fully?

June 7, 2026

There is mystery all around us, how held we are, if we stop and listen

Attention is a blessing. It’s a kind of energy that holds both power and magic. Wherever attention is focused, energy and life force follow. Which means it can be consciously and thoughtfully directed. I imagine this is why many, Simone Weil in particular, considered attention one of the most powerful forms of prayer. If I can be here with you, presently, and nowhere else, what is the potential that we can experience together and individually? Is this the wellspring where a creative act is generated, seeded, and comes forth? I think so.

When I feel truly seen, I’m honestly a bit nervous. I can be strangely unfamiliar territory. I’m giddy, yet energized. And in the hours or even days after the result of that attention settles in, kind of like the excitement and comfort of finally coming home after a long exhausting night out. The pleasure of the warmth. The familiarity of the walls. The access to the tea kettle and pajamas.

I feel like staying and hanging out for a while, calm and spreading, like leaves on the ground after a frosty autumn evening or puddles, how they level out the surface of things after a storm. My sense of attention goes from feeling utterly vulnerable to a lightness of being. An earth quaking liberation of my own personal aesthetics, whatever that may be. You and I or me and that thing either are drawn closer together or clarify a dignified separation. What I write, what I build, or what I create resonates.

Widening the aperture to let the world in

Three months ago I had a very close friend, a soul-sister, die. It was a terrible shock. And though I wouldn’t use the term, haunted, there is something about my attention, when it rests upon her I want to stay awhile. To talk to her. Remember the intonations of her voice and laughter. Sense her spirit as the perennial traveler it is. Our friendship was initially forged as colleagues working together from afar—Bogotá, Colombia and Albuquerque, New Mexico. And though we offered the other our utmost presence when together, I now realize all the things that remained unsaid. The Mystery, the inevitable unknowns that are and will always be one’s own.

When the moments present themselves and I’m able to see someone else fully, I’m reminded to stay—to listen with all of my body. To remain present in the time we share together. To practice downshifting so that it’s possible to entertain the long comfortable silences. At first it feels so awkward but eventually it allows space for something else to enter. Conversations stretch, in fact, recalibrate and slow down. Our last correspondence was, I’m going to rest and heal. We will reconnect soon. I love you. I love you too.

pablo neruda 1920s

And that time was like never and always:
We go where nothing is expected
And find everything waiting there. - Pablo Neruda

Strong spine, soft heart.

It was likely over ten years ago, when I was deep in my Brené Brown phase, reading and re-reading Dare to Lead, Rising Strong, or Braving the Wilderness when something she said stood out. I paraphrase as the exact quote came from an interview I watched. Courage is about having a strong spine yet a soft heart. From posture to prose to how we participate, how may we remain steady and upright while having the heart open to do what it does best: love.

Right now my grief is surrounding death or our mortality with eye contact, stillness, fewer words, or my back on the floor. Tai Chi has also been really nice. In the process I’m noticing that grief is often interrupted; by others, by life. Probably because grieving is messy, mushy, and unclear. And because of that it’s uncomfortable. But like the very water which makes up most of my being, more liquid than solid, I adapt and attempt flow. I open the lens to let more light in. I call a friend. I listen to the birds. I feel the wind on my skin. I feel her now in a different landscape, wide, warm, etheric, and untethered.

Yours, Erin

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What I’m Paying Attention To | What’s Coming Alive

[Loosely inspired by Simone Weil, (1909–1943) French philosopher, mystic, and political thinker who believed that “absolutely unmixed attention is prayer”.]

> There are many reasons why I offer a gardener’s interlude or created In A Slow Way or wrote Ways to Reconnect with Life (and so many other essays), but the most important one being that attention is precious and so is this life.

> The poem, KEEPING QUIET by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
 and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
 let’s not speak in any language;
 let’s stop for one second,
 and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
 without rush, without engines;
 we would all be together
 in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
 would not harm whales
 and the man gathering salt
 would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
 wars with gas, wars with fire,
 victories with no survivors,
 would put on clean clothes
 and walk about with their brothers
 in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
 with total inactivity.
 Life is what it is about;
 I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
 about keeping our lives moving,
 and for once could do nothing,
 perhaps a huge silence
 might interrupt this sadness
 of never understanding ourselves
 and of threatening ourselves with death.
 Perhaps the earth can teach us
 as when everything seems dead
 and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
 and you keep quiet and I will go.

> To Amy Goodman’s journalistic voice, who is celebrating 30 years this year with Democracy Now!