Practicing the art of paying attention...
I will not spend much time here introducing my own piece, but I will note that this is the fourth in an ongoing teacher series. The first three -- written by Rai Wilson, Ginny Robinson, and Ninamarie Ochoa -- were all fabulous.
For the first time since August, the 650 cupboard was bare. I took this as a sign that it was time for me to write something. It has been a long time since I graduated from high school (1982), so instead I decided to write about Zen birding.
- C.H.
I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is — I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
- Henry David Thoreau
People ask me why I like to watch birds.
I have a few ready answers. I have been doing it since I was a kid. It’s a fun hobby that I can engage in anytime and anywhere. It gets me outside.
All true. But as I reflect on a lifetime of following every wingbeat that comes into view, I have reached the conclusion that my interest in watching, seeing, and naming birds is also motivated by a deeper desire to practice the art of paying attention.
One would not think that we need to practice paying attention. It should be the easiest thing in the world. We simply direct the energy of our minds toward the person, place, thing, or activity on which we have chosen to focus -- and focus. You know, like a laser beam.
Why, then, do we need to work at paying attention? Because everything in the world conspires to keep us from doing exactly that. Our phones. Our computer screens. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. 2000 cable channels. This text, that tweet, those memes. And it’s not just technology and media. It is the natural state of things. It is thinking about the shitty thing that someone said to you this morning when you are talking to someone else in the afternoon. It is worrying about the responsibility you’ve got to attend to tomorrow while you are in the middle of today. It’s the movies we watch in our heads about the thing that happened yesterday or the thing we expect to happen this weekend. It’s thinking about the village when we are in the woods, as Thoreau says above. All of these things compete for our attention like an endless parade of popup messages. Internally and externally, we are assailed by media. Our attention is not just divided, it’s atomized.
I watch birds in my backyard, which backs up to a canyon, and when I do it’s pretty much the only thing I do. I pay attention to movement, sound, color.
Warblers, for instance, are small chittering birds that are easily overlooked. If you didn’t pause, be still, and watch for flashes of yellow in the trees, you might not even know they exist. They are also nervous and jumpy, never staying in one place for long. In order to get a good view with your binoculars, you have to be patient and still and calm.
The most common type of warbler in my canyon, and in all of San Diego County, is called the Yellow-Rumped Warbler. It is easy to assume that every warbler in the nearby trees is a Yellow-Rumped because they are so abundant. But during the spring migration, when birds are passing through Southern California on their way north, the warbler population explodes -- at least in my canyon it does. If I sit still, train my binoculars toward the silk oak that is blazing orange, I might see four or five different species of warbler. Townsend’s. Palm. Wilson’s. Hermit. All of these species have slightly different markings, so it takes some patience and persistence to get positive IDs.
Right about now you might be thinking, who really cares? Or, as one old friend said while drinking a beer with me in the backyard, “Cool, but who really gives a crap?”
Well, in short, I do. I give a crap about birds because I love being thrown into the world of nuance and subtlety, a world that requires attention to detail, patience, and a kind of deep attentiveness that quietly lifts my spirits. I love how the only way you can tell the difference between the Black Throated Gray Warbler and our common Yellow Rumped Warbler is a tiny little yellow spot in front of each eye (Grays have them; Yellow-Rumped do not). I love to keep track of basic migration patterns for various species in my own rudimentary way (dry erase board; see photo). I love how the female Hooded Orioles fly around playfully in pairs while the males sit and watch; I love to watch the curious mating dances of the local hummingbirds, especially when the male hovers high in the air and then zooms down and buzzes the female (“Look at me! Look at me!”).
So, yes, watching birds is my antidote to our pop-up-message world. At the same time, though, it serves as a kind of training ground for paying attention to the world around me. The skills required to watch birds -- attentiveness, awareness, focus -- are all qualities that I try to bring back to the non-birdwatching world. If I could display the same kind of laser-like undivided attention that I demonstrate while birding in my everyday affairs, I think I would a better person. I would certainly be closer to the person that I want to be. The renown Spanish poet Antonio Machado, in a series of poetic parables, famously wrote, “Pay attention now / a heart that is all by itself / is not a heart.” Mary Oliver, the great American poet who passed away last week, inspired millions by reminding us to give the gift of our attention. Committing ourselves to paying attention, now, to the people around us, to what they are saying and how they are acting, to color and sound and size, to nuance and subtlety, seems to me the most important thing in the world, for it leads to the qualities that sustain us all and make life worth living: caring, empathy, love. There’s a reason why Walt Whitman filled his poems with birds: he recognized that paying attention to little things can help you become better at paying attention to big things. “Hope,” as Emily Dickinson reminds us, “is the thing with feathers.”
My advice here is not to become a birdwatcher -- unless you are inclined in that direction. My advice is to find, pursue, and refine a passion, interest, or hobby that puts you in the position of having to pay close attention. It might be educated stargazing or becoming an aficionado of Beethoven concertos; it might be quilting or spelunking or butterflying or writing poetry. It might be taking beautiful close-up pictures of hummingbirds at your feeder. Become an expert. Give a crap about something. Invest your attention. It will pay dividends in the end.
I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is — I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
- Henry David Thoreau
People ask me why I like to watch birds.
I have a few ready answers. I have been doing it since I was a kid. It’s a fun hobby that I can engage in anytime and anywhere. It gets me outside.
All true. But as I reflect on a lifetime of following every wingbeat that comes into view, I have reached the conclusion that my interest in watching, seeing, and naming birds is also motivated by a deeper desire to practice the art of paying attention.
One would not think that we need to practice paying attention. It should be the easiest thing in the world. We simply direct the energy of our minds toward the person, place, thing, or activity on which we have chosen to focus -- and focus. You know, like a laser beam.
Why, then, do we need to work at paying attention? Because everything in the world conspires to keep us from doing exactly that. Our phones. Our computer screens. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. 2000 cable channels. This text, that tweet, those memes. And it’s not just technology and media. It is the natural state of things. It is thinking about the shitty thing that someone said to you this morning when you are talking to someone else in the afternoon. It is worrying about the responsibility you’ve got to attend to tomorrow while you are in the middle of today. It’s the movies we watch in our heads about the thing that happened yesterday or the thing we expect to happen this weekend. It’s thinking about the village when we are in the woods, as Thoreau says above. All of these things compete for our attention like an endless parade of popup messages. Internally and externally, we are assailed by media. Our attention is not just divided, it’s atomized.
I watch birds in my backyard, which backs up to a canyon, and when I do it’s pretty much the only thing I do. I pay attention to movement, sound, color.
Warblers, for instance, are small chittering birds that are easily overlooked. If you didn’t pause, be still, and watch for flashes of yellow in the trees, you might not even know they exist. They are also nervous and jumpy, never staying in one place for long. In order to get a good view with your binoculars, you have to be patient and still and calm.
The most common type of warbler in my canyon, and in all of San Diego County, is called the Yellow-Rumped Warbler. It is easy to assume that every warbler in the nearby trees is a Yellow-Rumped because they are so abundant. But during the spring migration, when birds are passing through Southern California on their way north, the warbler population explodes -- at least in my canyon it does. If I sit still, train my binoculars toward the silk oak that is blazing orange, I might see four or five different species of warbler. Townsend’s. Palm. Wilson’s. Hermit. All of these species have slightly different markings, so it takes some patience and persistence to get positive IDs.
Right about now you might be thinking, who really cares? Or, as one old friend said while drinking a beer with me in the backyard, “Cool, but who really gives a crap?”
Well, in short, I do. I give a crap about birds because I love being thrown into the world of nuance and subtlety, a world that requires attention to detail, patience, and a kind of deep attentiveness that quietly lifts my spirits. I love how the only way you can tell the difference between the Black Throated Gray Warbler and our common Yellow Rumped Warbler is a tiny little yellow spot in front of each eye (Grays have them; Yellow-Rumped do not). I love to keep track of basic migration patterns for various species in my own rudimentary way (dry erase board; see photo). I love how the female Hooded Orioles fly around playfully in pairs while the males sit and watch; I love to watch the curious mating dances of the local hummingbirds, especially when the male hovers high in the air and then zooms down and buzzes the female (“Look at me! Look at me!”).
So, yes, watching birds is my antidote to our pop-up-message world. At the same time, though, it serves as a kind of training ground for paying attention to the world around me. The skills required to watch birds -- attentiveness, awareness, focus -- are all qualities that I try to bring back to the non-birdwatching world. If I could display the same kind of laser-like undivided attention that I demonstrate while birding in my everyday affairs, I think I would a better person. I would certainly be closer to the person that I want to be. The renown Spanish poet Antonio Machado, in a series of poetic parables, famously wrote, “Pay attention now / a heart that is all by itself / is not a heart.” Mary Oliver, the great American poet who passed away last week, inspired millions by reminding us to give the gift of our attention. Committing ourselves to paying attention, now, to the people around us, to what they are saying and how they are acting, to color and sound and size, to nuance and subtlety, seems to me the most important thing in the world, for it leads to the qualities that sustain us all and make life worth living: caring, empathy, love. There’s a reason why Walt Whitman filled his poems with birds: he recognized that paying attention to little things can help you become better at paying attention to big things. “Hope,” as Emily Dickinson reminds us, “is the thing with feathers.”
My advice here is not to become a birdwatcher -- unless you are inclined in that direction. My advice is to find, pursue, and refine a passion, interest, or hobby that puts you in the position of having to pay close attention. It might be educated stargazing or becoming an aficionado of Beethoven concertos; it might be quilting or spelunking or butterflying or writing poetry. It might be taking beautiful close-up pictures of hummingbirds at your feeder. Become an expert. Give a crap about something. Invest your attention. It will pay dividends in the end.
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