Dew-bowed barley heads
In morning sun's scant, slant light
Radiant prisms.
Misty morning, riding east along Vivian with sun low and rising. Heavy seed heads, coated in dew nod on my way past.
Odd the associations that come up. Who'd of thought the pennant of Elmer the Safety Elephant, flying proudly below the Red Ensign on the front of Rose Seaton Public School would be the abiding image fluttering through a piece on 'noticing'. Not sure if Elmer is still about (although there do seem to be an increasing number of elephants in rooms!) -- but, if memory serves, back in the day this particular little triangular flag was awarded elementary schools which had managed to keep their youthful charges safe from traffic mishap for the preceding year. Elmer's abiding message was pretty simple: pay attention!
Translating his 1950's edict into today's language, Elmer might equally have implored us to stay present and be fully aware of what's going on around us -- as we step out from between parked cars, or hop on our bikes to head home from the school yard, or chase a ball into the street. Stop, look, listen. Not bad advice for a pachyderm in an orange sailor's cap.
Perhaps it was my week's conversations that conjured up old Elmer. Three in particular -- a coincidence that the chats were all with men (not to impugn the mindful status of one gender over the other). All three struggled with some aspect of presence: one concerned that he was quite literally 'losing his mind', presenting as an apparent problem with memory; a second so easily distracted that the mere whiff of an incoming email or text was enough to send him off on a tangent from whence he might return only hours later; and a third preparing to set off on a ten-day adventure into silence. As we dug a bit more deeply, there seemed to be a common thread running thru' all three. In the first case, the 'loss of mind' was very clearly -- after some thorough assessment -- not happening. Afoot, however, was what, in the business, is called an 'attentional issue': in short, not paying attention to what's going on in the present moment. The mind, the memory was just fine, thank you very much; the discipline to attend was not.
The second conversation orbited around worries of attention deficit and the workplace inefficiencies that so often coattail on this style. Fact or fiction, the 'fix' is the same: noticing one's response to those niggling little distractions and providing oneself a choice -- to check or not to check -- versus the knee-jerk twitch that has us automatically dancing to the tune of the next 'incoming', again, without a thought.
And finally, chat number three. This particular man, as with many of us, had spent precious little time with himself -- and he was, not surprisingly somewhat anxious about the prospect of ten days with a 'stranger'. What he was preparing to do was to make room, in a rather profound way, to do little other than notice. In the absence of small talk, business and social commitments, distractions of any stripe one can imagine, he was carving himself out a silent space to watch and, best he could, remain in the present moment.
All three are bright, successful, accomplished professionals. Despite the study, training, and business practice, all three were in need of cultivating one more skill: what I would call the attention reflex. It's reported that in 1948, in the first year following the introduction of Elmer and his simple rules, traffic accidents involving children in and around school hours dropped by 44%. It's my view that, by raising child awareness of the surround, in the moment they were about to act, it allowed this reflex to be triggered. Simply put, 'brain engaged before proceeding'. Call me cynical (it wouldn't be the first time), but I suspect kids, by having an elephant sit on them repeatedly, developed this reflex, 'automatically' stopping, looking, and listening . . . then acting.
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