Find your most mistaken idea among your most deeply held beliefs
I came across this quote by Simone Weil, a WWII era French philosopher and mystic – not sure the pairing is all that compatible, but carrying on. “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” I did some digging and came across a chapter from one of her books called “Attention and Will” where I found this. “We have to try to cure our faults through attention and not by will.” I would have said, “reckon with the limits of our agency,” in place of, “cure our faults,” but the idea that redirecting our attention can be more effective than simple will power in closing the gap between our actual and aspirational selves resonates with me.
I finished that chapter, but bounced off soon after. Simone Weil is way down a very particular rabbit hole where words like faith, love, sin, wretchedness, reality, and illusion have very particular definitions that make them fit together seamlessly, like parts in a whirring machine, the orchestrated wonder and complexity of which she can see but I can’t, not without expending the effort necessary to develop a working knowledge of that very specific lexicon and construct the same machine myself. I’ve got other priorities. I turned back after taking only a few steps down the rabbit hole.
And then it occurred to me that this is probably the experience of every one-time visitor to this site. If that’s you, I get it. I make the same type of judgment all the time. This rabbit hole is a winding warren, and you are wise to be parsimonious with your attention, that “rarest and purest form of generosity.”
No hard feelings and best of luck.