No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. – Matthew 6:24 (KJV)
When Winifred Gallagher found out she had cancer, she made a choice not to make it the focus of her life. She took advantage of medicine’s resources, of course, and fights the cancer with all that is available. But she decided she wasn’t going to obsess about her illness. She heeded the words of the psychologist William James, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
So Gallagher decided to spend her mental energies on finding and doing the things that gave her peace and brought happiness. She tells the story of her interest in learning how to concentrate and focus on life’s good things in her new book, Rapt.
Gallagher is no Christian – she calls herself a “neoagnostic.” But she has an appreciation for religion and especially for the contemplative disciplines which some religions, including Christianity, offer. She advocates meditation to increase the ability to concentrate. She suggests that the first ninety minutes of every day be given to one’s most important task. (After that, your brain needs to rest, she says with reference to work by neuroscientists.) She also recommends ear plugs. Because the world is a noisy place and you can’t expect it to be quiet just for you.
She is strongly critical of “multi-tasking,” too. She calls it a myth. “You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.” Or to quote William James again, “Wisdom is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
Gallagher said this about her decision to focus not on her cancer but on her life: “When I woke up in the morning, I’d ask myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance that you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends?” Then she paraphrases Milton: “Hell or heaven – it’s your choice.”
One could wish that Ms. Gallagher was a Christian and knew the hope of the resurrection, of course. That, in itself, is worth paying attention to. But she is looking in the right places for consolation in her battle with cancer. We can pray that she will find it. Still, what she is saying is good for us believers to hear. There are a lot of us who need to hear what she has to say – and not because what she is saying is new. It just needs to be said again and again by as many voices as will.
Jesus said it when he warned that none of us can divide our attention between God and the world’s goods. Paul said it, too, when he testified, “This one thing I do….” to the Philippians. Happiness is a choice and sometimes it takes some serious concentration to make that choice. But it’s well worth the effort to focus on what is good and true and beneficial.
Meditation and prayer are not easy things to do. Both demand attention and focus. In a noisy, flashy world, it can seem like an impossible task. And that’s when we might need to turn off the TV, the cell phone, the computer, and the lights in the room. And maybe even use ear plugs. Just so we can listen to God, who hardly ever speaks loudly.
“Attention is a finite resource,” Winifred Gallagher explains. How you invest that commodity is the life you choose for yourself. Paying attention pays off.
Thoughts Along the Way 