The indiscipline of attention

Supplanting off-grid energy and heating technologies, neurology has become my latest fascination. I’ve always been curious about brain science and my friend Ed Powers’ LinkedIn posts about how it applies to human behavior in the world of business do a nice job of stimulating and teasing that curiosity. Much further back though, I recall as a child reading an article in my mother’s Reader’s Digest magazine about a person who experienced in his visual field a few unexplainable blinding flashes of light, for him the first clues of a brain tumor. Motor movement difficulties followed for him, then diagnosis, then dread and despair, and finally, successful surgery and recovery. I still recall the details laid out in the story about the actual procedure, how the patient was anesthetized but kept awake so the surgeons could talk with him about what he was experiencing as they operated on his brain. As a said, fascinating stuff.

My recent revival of interest in neurology happened accidentally when our dog suddenly began experiencing violent seizures in February due to head and eye trauma. The initial veterinary diagnosis was epilepsy (apparently trauma can trigger its surfacing) but when the nature of the seizures shifted over a couple of months into a scarier dimension of higher frequency and greater intensity seizures, the assessment moved away from the typical profile of epilepsy. That’s when we agreed to an MRI (10 to 15 times the price for pets as what we normally pay as humans). You can probably guess the next sentence. The procedure returned a diagnosis we feared - a brain tumor, a glioma that was sitting on top of our boy’s frontal lobe. The prognosis isn’t great, and we’re told the best we can hope for is gentle palliative care. We’re all in for anything that makes him comfortable.

Weeks of working with his neurologist followed. Eventually, and mercifully, just three weeks ago, the perfect combination of drugs was found and whatever the god is that dogs pray to has responded with kindness. Our boy is now walking a high wire of drug-maintained peace and contentment. Mind you, we had to invest in him the cost of an older, used car or two floor seats to a Beyonce concert but it’s worth it.

It seems our dog’s case is unusual and despite her pledge to not take on new patients this year because she wants to retire and ease out of practice, she’s accepted him. She’s an attentive provider and is genuinely happy to educate us about the brain as much as we show interest. Which is to say, a lot. She also has an interesting little quirk. In conversations with her she consistently asks the same question. “Is he happy?” She said she asks us this for two reasons.

1. To crystallize our thinking so that we can honestly think about the quality of his life and make the best decisions for him based on a simple and honest assessment.
2. By answering the question, we are forced to check our ability to continue to maintain the requisite level of attention to his situation over time. The brain is a sophisticated organ and despite hundreds of years of scientific study, there is still much that humans do not know. Working as partners (we and the neurologist) in order to achieve and maintain an effective treatment program requires tweaking and testing, and incredible discipline and patience. Do we have that ability?

Is he happy is a good baseline type of question for all kinds of areas of life. It forces clarity of thought.

I’m reminded of the need for clarity and for attention discipline when I think about:

• all the noise of working in modern business
• how urgent we feel it is to find ways to be smarter, faster, more efficient, and more productive
• how we’re told we can be our own bosses and all we have to do is master the understanding of how modern tools can change our companies and our careers
• how technology providers inundate us with the promise of newer capabilities and power (think ChatGPT)
• how all of the threads combine to create a feeling that we can’t keep up and ?that we must keep up

Reacting to all these forces in an impulsive way can be unhealthy, and it can often hinder our ability to?achieve goals. We can find ourselves always chasing the new thing for fear of being left behind.

Religions have terminology that can help but, in short, maybe we should slow down and ask ourselves:

• Is the effort I’m expending valued by the other party? How do I know? What can I observe or hear that informs my answer?
• Is the effort to sustain the happiness of others worth my time and energy? This might sound selfish but as humans we can only be fully responsible for the actions that support our own well-being.
• Am I able to maintain the attention necessary to sustain that value that others perceive I am providing?
• Do I have the discipline and desire to stick with something - even if it means I miss out on something else - that has been shown to be valuable to others and, as a side benefit, to me?

In the case of Blackjack (our dog), we’re able to answer yes to each of these. But for other situations in our life the answers could, should, and do vary. For me it boils down to this. If it matters, my focus and my attention are easy.