As I get older, I see the cost all my squandered attention has had on my happiness and how I participate in my relationships. There is a fight going on all around us for the precious resource of attention. Internally we have norms and standards we what to live up by, which often conflict with our moment to moment lived life experience. It can be hard to stay focused on the thing in front of you when our attention is siphoned by distractions in the environment.

• "When it's over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." - Mary Oliver 'When Death Comes.'

Any project that focuses our attention is a project worth working on. Things that misdirect attention are things we want to avoid, drop once picked up, and learn to leave alone if not picked up. These distractions can be manifest consciously with or without malice, it really doesn't matter. It is up to the adult in me to steer the focus of my attention.

Unconscious reactions to distracting stimulus is the result of losing track of my priorities. If I learn to keep my priories in the front of my mind, I have a better chance of steering my attention the way I want. The bad news is that the attention' muscle' can atrophy if untrained. If not careful, we can grow used to being distracted and become slaves to someone else's agenda. The good news is that it can be strengthened.

One can become the Arnold Schwarzenegger of attention.

• "... not allowing our own nervous systems to remain addicted to the channels of communication that maintain the collective trance of consumerism — today an important component of accepted "social reality." Instead, we accept responsibility for liberating our own attention and clarifying our own awareness, which usually requires some sort of meditation practice. - David Loy (2019): Ecodharma: Buddhist teachings for the ecological crisis