The receptive, reflective act of paying attention
For Simone Weil, paying attention means asking, ”What are you going through?”
“Everyone knows what attention is.” So writes William James in his magisterial work, The Principles of Psychology (1890). True enough, most of us share an understanding of what it means to concentrate our focus tightly on someone or something. We know that giving serious attention to a person or an activity requires a kind of mental tenacity, a muscular effort of the mind.
But must attention always signal strenuousness? Simone Weil, the French philosopher and social theorist, doesn’t think so. She’s convinced there’s a more beautiful form of attending to someone than just displaying tense concentration. “To attend means not to seek, but to wait; not to concentrate, but instead to dilate our minds.” When it comes to one’s own attention, Weil suggests a receptive disposition that’s more reflective than aggressive, more standing still than strenuous.
When Riccardo Muti, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s acclaimed music director, walked on stage last month, the attention of the audience was focused on Chicago’s world-class orchestra preparing to perform the single work of the evening, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Regarded as Beethoven’s greatest work, it’s the final movement of that piece, which includes a symphony chorus exalting in the well-known “Ode to Joy,” that audiences eagerly anticipate.
