Simone Weil and Attention in Everyday Life
Part 2 in a series on fixing my attention
Last time, I raised the question of what happened to my attention
Today, I’ll explore one of my favorite thinkers on this idea: Simone Weil
I first encountered Simone Weil in graduate school, and she’s been on and off my beside books for so many years. Honestly, I cannot claim to really understand her thinking. But I enjoy reading her works a lot. The words are so mysterious and impenetrable. Whenever I read, I feel like I’m meeting a wild and free mind.
But every once in a while, a paragraph or section will strike a chord within in. If I happen to be at just the right place and time in my life where her words can land with full force.
Today, it’s her writings on ‘attention’
She says:
Attention is an effort, the greatest effort of all efforts perhaps, but it is a negative effort. . . Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object. . . Above all, our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it.1
I find this definition painful and exciting. There’s a paradox in talking about effort and standing still. I’m reminded of my own experiences with meditation, prayer, and mindfulness. And just how hard it is to sit still and do nothing.
It is easier to lean in, to move, or to take action. I want to make something happen, (or I want to make something happen.) I want to be hasty
The effort required in just being still is infuriating.
Maybe attention is like loving Mathematics?
Few people know that I studied Mathematics in university.
When people ask why I love Math, I tell them it’s because it’s clear. Math has numbers and proofs. It’s simple- and there’s always an answer.
But as I advanced in my subjects, the problems got more complex. More and more I bumped into problems that I could not answer.
I remember one night, it was 2am. I was lying wide awake, unable to sleep. We were given a math problem to solve, and my brain couldn’t leave it alone. So I jumped out of bed, made some tea and sat at my desk. Then I got out some paper and explored all the different possibilities of the problem.
That was my favorite moment of being a mathematician. The absolute thrill of a puzzle that was beyond my current grasp.
Contrary to popular belief, math is not a step-by-step linear approach. It is full of trial and error. It is full of guessing. Likewise, it is full of problems that seem to make no sense.
Until one point, where you’ve sat with it long enough, suddenly in a flash of insight it all comes together.
Productivity is the enemy of attention
I risk losing people in the math metaphor, but I expect we all have the experience of struggling with a beautiful and frustrating problem that we cannot solve.
We struggle and it is hard, but it also enriches us.
Weil again:
The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies. . .Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted. It always has its effect on the spiritual plane. . .If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without our knowing or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul.2
It is a dense quote, and she also uses math as an example. But if I were to state it my way, it says that even though it feels like we’re not making progress on a problem, the very fact that we struggle changes something inside of us.
Attention is not about focusing on finding answers. It’s not about getting to the end.
It is more about seeing questions and puzzles, and learning to sit with them even if we cannot find the answers. (Like koans in the Zen tradition)
In a subject like Mathematics, we can sit for a long time with a geometry problem, and at the end of an hour have made little progress. But in that hour, we will have entered into "another more mysterious dimension."
This is a moral dimension: It is a space where, by our act of attention, we grasp what has always been the real mystery.
To pay attention: Stop problem-solving
As I understand it then, attention is not about directing our will and energies into focusing on an issue or a problem. It is like a mystery, it is like getting lost. It’s like wandering around a new city and exploring something new.
Attention is a preparation. It's being ready to attend to something that may come across my reality today. It is when I see everything and everyone with a beginner’s mind.
When someone comes to my front door, and I send them away because I am busy with things that are imagined, I fail to attend to the reality in front of me.
Attention is being ready to attend to the reality in front of me.
Simone Weil, Waiting for God
same book Waiting for God