paying attention

 "It turns out that attention - what we pay attention to, and how we attend - is the most important part of the mindset needed for re-enchantment.

It's like this: if enchantment involves establishing a meaningful, reciprocal, and resonant connection with God and creation, then to sequester ourselves in the self-exile of abstraction is to be the authors of our own alienation.
'Attention changes the world,' says Iain McGilchrist. 'How you attend to it changes what it is you find there. What you find then governs the kind of attention you will think it appropriate to pay in the future. And so it is that the world you recognize (which will not be exactly the same as my world) is firmed up - and brought into being.'

Matthew Crawford writes that living in a world in which we are encouraged to embrace the freedom of following our own desires - which entails paying attention only to what interests us in a given moment - actually renders us impotent. He writes, 'The paradox is that the idea of autonomy seems to work against the development and flourishing of any rich ecology of attention - the sort in which minds may become powerful and achieve genuine independence.'"

                                                        -  Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder