Wednesday: Why I Blog Now

Blogging and the Focused Life

I've recently come to a new appreciation for blogging, and I owe it to Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, a wonderful book by Winifred Gallagher.

It's a powerful book. I have little doubt that some people, by nature, intuitively adhere to the mental life that Gallagher promotes, but for those of us who incline toward certain intellectual fears, it's a God-send. Those intellectual fears include things like "Opportunity-Cost Paralysis," "Pain Seeking," and "Fear of Repression."

Those phrases are mine. The first (Opportunity-Cost Paralysis) refers to a tendency to think, "If I do X, I won't be pursuing Y and Z." As a result of OCP, I would flit between X, Y, and Z, with perhaps A, K, and T thrown in. In short, I wouldn't get anything worthwhile done. Rapt taught me that the important thing is to do X, Y, Z, A, K, or T: just pick one, embrace it (get "rapt" up in it, pun to speak), and to hell with opportunity costs . . . and to hell with whether anything will come from it. The important thing is to focus your attention on something that is sufficiently engaging to capture it.

The second, Pain Seeking, is the mind's tendency to gravitate toward negative thoughts: worries, bad memories, etc. It's called "the negative bias theory": We pay more attention to unpleasant feelings such as fear, anger, and sadness because they're simply more powerful than the agreeable sort. When negative things used to enter my mind, I embraced them. I didn't embrace them because I wanted to or because I'm a sadist. I embraced them because I thought that's what a man does: Face the fears, wrestle with them, beat them to the ground. But now I realize that's simply not a good thing to do. The best thing to do is to ignore them, to yank your attention away to something positive (virtues, kindness, how to help others). Now that I understand this negative bias theory, I try to treat my mind like a garden: I'm careful about what I plant and what I allow to grow . . . and I'm ruthless with weeds.

The third is Fear of Repression. When negative thoughts entered my mind, I confronted them and played with them for another reason: Fear that, if I merely ignored them, I would be repressing those fears and worries, which would lead to health problems and, possibly, severe psychological repercussions later. No less a thinker than C.S. Lewis respected the phenomenon of repression. Although I'm still not entirely clear on the difference between "repression" and "embracing the negative," I try to give repression a very small place in my mental landscape anymore. If I am repressing things, I figure the benefits of embracing the positive outweigh the effects of dwelling on the negative.

More than Just "Positive"

The truth is, I loathe the phrase "embrace the positive." Heck, I loathe the word "positive." Those are merely vague terms for more concrete mental actions, like "think kindly of others," "count your blessings," "root out all anger" and "weave a little nosegay" (Francis de Sales' shockingly unmanly, but wise, phrase). Those are things I've long believed in, but they were dwarfed by negative bias. I never knew how to square the two. At age 43, I started to understand.

Thanks to Rapt, I've now come to understand that focus itself is a good thing. Sure, I've long appreciated Simone Weil's observation that, "In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention." In fact, I've had it written on my desk at work for many years.

But Rapt showed me that the principle should apply to my entire active life, whether I'm reading, writing, working, gardening, or talking with someone. Unless I'm relaxing, I should be focused. Any mental area between these two (relaxing and focusing) is a less desirable state.

Focused on Blogging

Which brings me (finally) to blogging. Writing is a great way to focus. That's probably why I've enjoyed it for so many years. Blogging is a great way to focus for short spells. With a lengthy blog post (like this one), a man fills the hour in a good way. . . and that's a good thing. Writing engages me fully, and when a person is engaged fully, he's staying away from the mind's inclination to probe the negative.

I realize such things could be mere distractions from ennui, things that distract us from our existential predicament, and things that distract us from the more important obligation of developing our souls. In that, they're bad. But to the extent they engage a person productively and fruitfully, they're good.

I honestly don't know when a person crosses over from calm concentration (a good) to busied activity (a minor vice). In fact, I'm pretty sure it varies from person to person. A lot of it probably pertains to intelligence: gardening might wholly absorb a dull person, whereas only philosophy engages a smarter person (both engage me, incidentally, which completely confuses me, but makes me think I'm more gardener than philosopher). And a lot of it probably depends on how you engage the activity: with total focus, or as just another thing to do in order to get through the day.

But I do know that writing requires calm concentration and blogging is writing. And I no longer care whether blogging takes time away from more "important" writing and I no longer care how many people read what I write (well, I do care, but it's no longer much of a concern). Blogging is engaging. In that, it is a good thing, regardless of who reads and regardless of what I write.

Now, could this lead to a type of narcissism? And how does all this fit into prayer? And what is the relationship between the state of total focus and the Zen idea of "just looking"? And what about the relationship of total focus with living in The Now?

Those topics will have to wait another day. I'm still sorting through them myself.