attention

Attention

by Bob on April 4, 2008

This is dedicated, inspired, and actually a paean to a wonderfully talented young artist who made me think about many things all over again, including giving and receiving attention.

Attention. We might all say we crave it. We might also say we disdain it when it seems overdone.

It’s a very delicate balance this bit about giving and receiving attention from someone. It’s a scale that’s very sensitive to tipping one way or another.

What’s very clear in many cases is that when someone gets a little bit too much attention from someone else in particular, it can make the attended person a bit nervous or even want to run away. This happens to me, even. I liked the chase when I was younger, but when I got the person it sometimes felt anti-climactic. I think this is almost a truism in life: when we chase something feverishly, when we finally get it, there are at least two likely outcomes: firstly, a kind of being startled that we finally got the seemingly impossible goal and now don’t either want it anymore or don’t know what to do with it, or secondly a sense of happiness and tranquility for the chase is over and we have the prize. Hollywood loves the latter as a film sub-thema.

Besides romance or sport, this also happens with making money and upward mobility on the social ladder.

Another aspect of this is when the goal is gotten too quickly, the prize is being held tenuously and built on a house of cards. Since we know that really the tortoise always seems to win over the hare who dies of a heart attack running so fast whilst the tortoise just plods along steadily and slowly, we must build a relationship or social situation or job or we must start up slowly like properly erecting a building. Erecting a building too fast makes it likely to fall down. One must take a lot of time for the foundation too.

So some people run away from attention and affection. Others just love it perhaps to a fault. We run into the area of human characteristics known as suspicion which of course we should turn to Hitchcock’s films to learn all about.

Sometimes even if love is staring us right in the face we can’t accept it. Or just simply affection. Or just simply success in our lives and careers. So many people are startled that they have finally achieved success that they then proceed to sabotage themselves and lose it all.

It’s time to be more scholarly and turn to a very interesting book by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, called "Women Who Run With the Wolves" published in 1992. In it we can see in a Jungian sense what it means to experience fear and how really useful and un-useful fear is. It’s likely good to be fearful of a big grizzly bear coming at you to eat you, so your fear pumps adrenalin and you can run faster than you ever thought or climb a tree higher than you could have imagined possible to escape the good bear. But also fear can be paralysing as we see with panic and Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia. It’s an odd seemingly un-based unrealistic fear that is hypothesised to cause Panic Disorder. We can all go back to the root of the word, "panic" which goes back to the Greek god Pan who besides all his other amorous talents as a satyr and musician of the pipes also caused a sudden fear into shepherds tending their flocks isolated in the mountains of ancient Boetia. Pan was said to have induced a sudden fear into people in lonely places. But I digress.

So getting back to fear and Dr. Clarissa Estes we can see that many Jungian archetypes are involved with fear and the warrior who is brave. Let us quote her in an interesting passage on page 140:

"The Death nature has an odd habit of surfacing in love affairs just at the time we feel we have won over a lover, just as we feel we have landed ’a big fish’. That’s when the Life/Death/Life nature surfaces and scares everyone sideways. That is when more contortions go on about why love canno, will not, should not ’work’ for either party concerned. That is where all the diving into the burrow is done. It is an effort to become invisible. Invisible to the lover? No. Invisible to the Skeleton Woman. That is what all the running and hiding is about."

Dr. Estes continues her thought in perhaps a classical Jungian way:

"Rational psyche goes fishing for something deep and not only lands it but is so shocked it can barely stand it. Lovers have a sense that something is chasing them. Sometimes they think it is the other who is doing the chasing. In reality, it is the Skeleton Woman. At first when when learn to truly love, we misunderstand many things. We think the other is chasing us, when in fact our intention to relate to another human being in a special way is what hooks Skeleton Woman so she cannot escape from us. Wherever love is nascent, the Life/Death/Life force will always surface. Always."

Dr. Estes concludes this whole train of thought:

"We see this odd phenomenon in all love affairs: the faster he runs, the more she picks up speed. When one or the other lover attempts to run from the relationship, the relationship is paradoxically invested with more life. And the more life that is created, the more frightened the fisherman becomes. And the more he runs, the more life is created. This phenomenon is one of life’s central tragi-comedies".

This is all very simple yet very amazing. I wish I had a clear insight into this in my teenage years. I would have understood the game of life a bit better. But so it goes.

The big thing is never to give attention where it is really unwanted. That is forcing an issue, even if just playful, where it’s improper to push one’s self on another, despite what Dr. Estes wrote.

Like someone once told me, it’s really important to know when to get out. Very important point. Then again Woody Allen said 90% of success is just showing up.

So, we are left with the Human Condition. Adam in the Garden of Eden protested to his Creator that he was lonely despite having it all, so Eve was created. Mary Shelley followed this up in her "Frankenstein" where the creature similarly protested. There are other traditions. Holy writings say man is not meant to be alone.

So what’s with virtual reality and iPODs shutting the world out ? Well, if not used to an excess it’s okay but to an excess is a big kiss-off to the rest of the world inhabitants. Would that we only realised we are on this Ship of Fools together for just a seeming brief period. But, alack and alas, the illusion of permanence persists.

And, as they say, the only permanent things are death and taxes.

Nevertheless, the whole lesson is to be respectful of other’s feelings and wishes. So it’s not about love or affection, per se, but about respect. Like Aretha Franklin sang about in her 1967 song, "Respect". And of course it was originally written and recorded first in 1965 by the ever so brilliant and talented Otis Reading. But Aretha made it stick. "R-E-S-P-E-C-T ... find out what it means to me" said the song.