Concentration.............

I finally finished an article that I bookmarked a few days ago.  I just couldn’t finish it, interrupted by one thing and another, always something.  Anyway, it’s this swell article by Tamim Ansary titled “Concentration is the Key”.  Looking at the way I manage my day – I manage my day?  Hell, my day manages ME.  Looking at this has given me an epiphany as to how I spend my time and how well (badly) I concentrate.

I’m back now – had to disrupt a to-the-death dog fight downstairs.  Where was I?  Yes.  Concentration.  This guy wrote a piece I found on the MSN web.  I’ll quote some stuff here and I hope to God (or, hope to Bill) that the Microsoft attorneys don’t descend on me like the hounds from hell they must be.   Tamim writes:

Anecdotes about famous achievers of history suggest that one thing they shared was a phenomenal ability to get fully immersed in … something.

Michelangelo spent two years on his back, two feet from the ceiling, painting the Sistine Chapel. I myself would have spent most of that time idly wondering whether to have pizza that night or soup.

In fact, according to the stories, only the pope could break the great artist's concentration. He kept coming in to ask, "How's it going?" Finally Michelangelo "accidentally" dropped a hammer that landed too close for comfort, and the pope stayed away after that.

 

This gives me an idea.  Tomorrow I may get one of those performer’s throwing knives and throw it against the wall, impaling it a couple inches into the drywall, close to the person who has arrived in my space to chat about some fucking inane TV show they watched last night, and did I see it?

I’m back.  God-DAMN the sales calls I get.  Where was I?  Yes.  The article on concentration.  Tamim goes on to talk about brain waves of people who have learned to concentrate compared to those of untrained people.  Seems these folks who have learned to concentrate are only temporarily interrupted when a loud and obnoxious noise occurs, like, say an atom bomb.  Other untrained folks drop what they’re doing (or maybe in the case of an atom bomb, watch their hands disintegrate) and stay interrupted for a longer period of time.  This explains the ‘nuclear shadows’ found in Hiroshima of the silhouettes of two men playing chess.

 

I’m back now.  Thought about food, then before I knew it I was at the market buying dinner and having a double tall no-whip, non fat, extra hot, double doo, scoobie doo, whoop-de-doo lafuckingtay at Starbucks.  Boy it was good.  Where was I?  Yes.  Concentration. 

Tamim says towards the last of the article that:

Adults with normal powers of concentration can strengthen those powers with simple exercises such as the following:

• Count backward from 100 slowly and steadily.
• Count backward from 100 by threes.
• Simply look at an object for a set period -- say, 15 minutes.
• Building on the previous exercise, remove the object and picture it for that same period.

And if the buzz of distracting thoughts grows intolerable, stop what you're doing, make a list of everything on your mind at that moment, choose one thing to focus on, and then schedule a time to deal with all the rest. Giving your anxieties appointments, I find, tends to make them stop petitioning for attention now.

 

In short, I stand with those Zen masters who, when asked how they achieved enlightenment, answered, "When I walk, I just walk. When I eat, I just eat."

 

Insert – a long silence. 

 

I’m looking at some random stuff on my desk now.  Some bills.  It’s been fifteen minutes.  They’re still there.  So, as Tamim suggests, I threw them away.  Now I’m just imagining them.  This is actually working.  They are slowly starting to fade from my memory.  I’ve saved some stamps, feel better, and have more money than I thought I had.  This concentration thing might just be what I’ve needed.

 

 

Tamim Ansary writes on culture and society for Encarta. He is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir "West of Kabul, East of New York," as well as dozens of nonfiction books for children.