Concentration

Concentration is difficult in this day and age!

There is a lot of ways to divide our time and countless ways of instructing, training, applying oneself to the task at hand – but actually following through on something – especially if you’re a chronic self-starter like me – you find yourself surrounded by projects that were started, or in the steps of getting to that point – but never finished.

In addition to these steps in modernization and technologies – the accessibility to others through social media and just electronics (i.e. phones, e-mail, notification bumps, pings, computers) is OVERWHELMING for any human being – hearkening back to when Drew Barrymore complained that texts, emails, beepers, blueberries, landlines, and cellphones were just more ways in which you could be disappointed or dumped:

“He’s Just Not That Into You”

Things are so much different now than any human generation or society in our past. We have seen improvements, and “good” changes in many areas and on many levels. We have identified a lot of systematic problems as well -but those aside…

These many electronics and means of communications now trigger us – jolting us out of any path we were – basically de-railing a thought (Eg. I just received a text from an important someone – this sidetracked me from finishing this seemingly straightforward and simple blog post).

It is hard enough when you walk into a room and forget why you came in there. When you intentionally come to sit in front of your computer – but suddenly forget what you were doing – so quickly eclipsed by a new thought, idea, or action based on the last screen up – or files sitting on your desktop – or the sudden need to refresh everything as you feel you need the most current “inbox” or “news” at your finger tips… though you already did this today, and will do it countless more times today…

We are all in denial about this.

It is not healthy, it is not what humans endured in generations past – we are affected and effected by all this, and when there is nation if not world wide catastrophic or pandemic-level type sh*t – you respond… or at least your reactions… are left with wanton emotions, feelings, thoughts, and musings that have no where to go but in or out… and the means to this cause depression, frustration, inactivity, melancholy, irritation, detrimental habitual choices, and mind-numbing needs (usually in the form of some drug or other).

We need release – we need things around us to get redeemed in quality in some way – but who will do that?

I had resigned myself to the need to avoid and eliminate gatekeepers in my life – only to find that trolls and other filth exist in a realm where the usual censorship no longer applies (i.e. pretty much any media platform: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Google, etc.)

“Hate Speech” has become commonplace – and focusing on anything in life – whether with intentional thought or direction meets an onslaught of varying priorities, distractions, and delineations – taking you down other paths – “Rabbit Holes” – if you will – like the Weekly, Season 1, Episode 9 – on the affects of YouTube on countries, politics, and societies in the world as a whole.

So, yes, concentration is a skill many of us lack in the true sense – where focusing on a single task (like an MIT), completing it from beginning to end in one sitting – becomes a chore, a multitude of tasks, -painful as sin- and yet… necessary?

The meaning of life is lost on me in these moments.