The experience of being within the attention of compassionate people can be powerful enough to save a life. To be receive attention can encourage a man in the grips of pain to hang-on in spite of that pain, and even tyrants may feel they must give mercy when a prisoner has the attention of hundreds or thousands of people throughout the world. To pay attention to others is also to attend to our own lives. It is to see what we love, to understand what is sacred, remember what is cherished. I see that I can build my dignity upon fortune and success - and even that will someday be lost, or I can build my dignity upon my will to see even the invisible in open sight and upon a heart open enough to hear all the sounds around us.
Attention is a skill that requires most or all of an adult s life.
But there is a profound joy that comes by attention. It is the joy of a Summer s day given to seeing life. It is the joy children find merely in being alive. It is the quiet joy in the wisdom of experience our elders have to share. It is the joy of discovering the strange laws of the smallest particles.