At any given moment there are millions of things big and small vying for our attention. How do we pay attention to the “right” things as we strive to take care of ourselves and those around us? Join us for another dive into the #MedHumChat archives as we revisit the topic of Attention with the two pieces shared below. This chat was originally curated by Ritu Thamman and has been updated by Rebecca Omlor.

Marge Piercy: Doors opening, closing on us

Doors opening, closing on us

Maybe there is more of the magical

in the idea of a door than in the door

itself. It’s always a matter of going

through into something else. But

while some doors lead to cathedrals

arching up overhead like stormy skies

and some to sumptuous auditoriums

and some to caves of nuclear monsters

most just yield a bathroom or a closet.

Still, the image of a door is liminal,

passing from one place into another

one state to the other, boundaries

and promises and threats. Inside

to outside, light into dark, dark into

light, cold into warm, known into

strange, safe into terror, wind

into stillness, silence into noise

or music. We slice our life into

segments by rituals, each a door

to a presumed new phase. We see

ourselves progressing from room

to room perhaps dragging our toys

along until the last door opens

and we pass at last into was.

Sarah Manguso: The Two Kinds of Decay

Selected Excerpt

“There are two kinds of decay: mine and everyone else’s. This is the usual sort of book about illness. Someone gets sick, someone gets well. Those who claim to write about something larger and more significant than the self sometimes fail to comprehend the dimensions of a self. Most people consider their own suffering a widely applicable model, and I am no exception. This is suffering’s lesson: pay attention. The important part might come in a form you do not recognize. You might not know to love it. But to pay attention is to love everything. To see the future as brightness. Everything that happens is the last time it happens. We see things only as their own fatal brightness, and there is nothing after that brightness. You can’t learn from remembering. You can’t learn from guessing. You can learn only from moving forward at the rate you are moved, as brightness, into brightness.” (“The End,” pgs 183-184)