"How you love anything is how you love everything."
--------Richard Rohr in The Naked Now
My original tweaking of this quote would be fitting: "How you show attention to anything is how you show attention to everything." Attentiveness, like love, is "one piece." As I increasingly notice the unnoticeable, the ordinary, the mundane, I am developing muscles of attentiveness that spill over into the whole of life. We become the kinds of people who pay attention indiscriminately.
One of the assignments I have implemented in classes or workshops to develop these valuable muscles is asking students to draw the most boring subject in view. Don't go looking for a "good" subject, but find that "good" in what I am currently dismissing... to discover the intrinsic beauty in the least makes life a kind of adventure.
Fully developed (ing) attentiveness saves the artist from the trap of self-absorbtion since it has become, as Mr. Rohr describes, "one piece". Our attention now includes the range of people and circumstances so integral to our lives. Practiced well, attentiveness gives to the world the same consideration it gives to the object of its art.
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