Focus

Want something? Is it a thing you want? Or maybe it is a feeling? A sensation, perhaps?

Are you certain you know what it is you want? Is this personal? Or a universal. Is this what you need for yourself or is this ‘thing’ something you wish shared by everyone? What is it you are looking for? What’s wrong, Nemo?

Like everyone else on the planet, I often get the feeling that something is missing from my life. That usually begins a hunt for it, only I haven’t fully defined it yet. A search for the un-named is almost a certain folly.

Yet that doesn’t stop others from the folly. They go merrily on their way seeking the un-named and make a spectacle of themselves! Look at all the bars filled with drinkers surging from one group to another inserting their smiles, winks and comments. A throbbing crowd of people feeling good and rising higher as they look for the ‘something’ in their life that is missing.

Perhaps it is sex, pure and simple? Or maybe companionship, or a good conversation, a deep discussion of what interests them the most, or a bundle of other things pending in their lives without conclusion, resolution, or even the faintest of definitions.

I’ve been in those dens many times. It was many years ago, but I remember them well. And I recall the escape from it as well.

Ah, yes! The escape. To where? To silence and alone time.

The quiet captured the senses then. The rushing throb of silence in the ears, like air passing rhythmically past the eardrum. The lack of another body nearby. The aloneness was not a burden but a pleasure. No competing id or ego to distract from thinking clearly; first linear, then circular, and finally, three-D cubic. Shifting shapes, places and timelines that illuminate the idea fully. A fresh perspective on an old topic, with new outcomes and conclusions.

Break-through thinking with a succession of a-ha’s.

All from silence. All from being alone. All without distraction from others and their clashing processes of chatter-thinking. The chaos is at bay. The space for ideas provided. Now the thinking moves ahead.

With startling results. Steve Jobs must have had many moments such as these. Bill Gates, too. And Einstein, Beethoven, Mozart and other thinkers of their day.

It is not just discipline that produces results. It is what we do with it that matters. And the context of its creation. All good. All necessary for clear thinking.

Do we allow this in our lives? To really focus?

August 9, 2018