…Everyone is vying for the most precious and valuable commodity to be sought – our attention. Think about it: Every advertiser, every potential vendor and company desperately wants your attention, and will go to great, and sometimes outrageous, lengths to obtain it. If attention is the most valuable commodity, our most valued asset, it may be said that the most valuable personal skill to be effective these days is ignorance, literally ignore-ance – the ability to selectively and appropriately ignore that which is irrelevant or merely distracting.
Mark Federman, The Cultural Paradox of the Global Village
Is your attention like a tax automatically deducted? Is it something you spend without thinking? Or do you consciously choose where and how you will spend it?
Are you able to ignore? That’s a great question, and it is certainly a discipline to be cultivated. I’ve never seen ignorance on a list of spiritual disciplines, but…
Does this mean that we will ignore everything? Of course not. But it means that we will be selective in how we distribute it. Everyone is selective with their attention in some ways to be sure. The issue is making a conscious decision about where we will focus it.
More to come in the next post…
Perhaps we might apply “self-control” (Gal 5:23) to the issue of “ignor-ance”. I’m also thinking about Psalm 46:10, as I consider this post.
I thought about Jesus getting away from the crowds from time to time, and calling his disciples to do the same. I also thought about how for every one that he healed, he must have passed up twenty. It’s an interesting thought.