“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” Simone Weil
“Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.” J.D. McClatchy.
Attentiveness
Deep attention is one of the most precious treasures we can share. Attentiveness is allowing another’s reality – for that rarest of moments – to be as important as your own. Looking and listening with respect, even reverence, in unconditional acceptance, with warmth and gentleness, is the most deeply humanizing activity in which we can invest ourselves.
We are social creatures. We are most alive when in relation to others. We glean from the attention and affection of those around us our sense of belonging, self-worth, and inner beauty.
This need for affirmation joins us at birth. The adulation, the wonder, the amazement, the smiles, the tickles under the chin, the coo-cooing – these are not irrelevant, thoughtless, time-wasting gestures. They are building a passable bridge between the vulnerable, malleable psyche of a newborn baby to the wild, intimidating, adult world awaiting. From that initial moment onward, we survey each day with the hope that we will be revisited by this same primal affirmation and assurance that we belong, that we are loved, and that we are all we need to be.
Then something else fascinating happens. As adults, our need to share affirmation and attention in mutuality displaces our narcissistic childhood needs. That is the glorious expansion into relationship.
Attentiveness is the heart tango.
Tango has the potential of being one of the places that we find these soul-sought assurances. In the giving and receiving of attention, we absorb the healing energy of the dance.
Throughout the dance, we continually attend to the needs of our partner. We respond to the other’s mood, their shift of weight, their responsiveness to the music and motion. In this exchange, both are nurtured by the exchange and generosity of spirit. A captured glance, a responsive smile, an extended hand, a warm and comforting embrace, all of these seemingly small or routine gestures reconnect us with our childhood longing to be adored.
Attentiveness and Spirit
Attentiveness is the essential spiritual exercise. It is surrender to the bidding of the moment. When I am completely open, receptive, and responsive to that thin, brilliant flash of inspiration, I am visited by Presence.
The Tango as a spiritual discipline forces me to invest my complete self in the moment. The improvised patterns which must be adapted to the music and one’s partner’s positioning and skill level, intensify my focus. To move in Tango requires acute listening and attunement, not only to one’s partner but one’s self as well. All the elements of embrace – axis, motion, responsiveness – come into play.
Attention and Intention
Attention is rootless without grounded intention. My intention must be directed outside of myself to the sculpting of the dance and the pleasure of my partner. I must surrender to the dictates of the Dance and allow myself to be directed by it: the blending of motion and music and sensuality into the elegant and beautiful.
If I am closed off to my partner and focused more on ego needs: worried about how something looks, or about whether I am impressing my partner; Or if I am preoccupied with sequenced patterns or technical elements, without listening to my partner and adjusting my dance accordingly; Or if I am constricted by insecurity and resistant to vulnerability and intimacy, then the precious moments will flit past, empty of inspiration.
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Thank you for your attention.
As always, you state things beautifully because you pay attention to yourself and the dance of life in which you participate. My question is: what do we do when we’ve chosen the wrong partner in the dance of life? When you pay attention, and they don’t? Obviously, we can only control what we do. Even in our most earnest endeavour to get our partner to pay attention, the task fails. What then?
My previous comment sounded like a Dear Abby solicitation but it wasn’t meant to be. As in all things in life, we might have the right attention and intention but others might not. Everyone is doing their own dance, with or without a partner. And if their dancing or our partner’s dancing collides with us, how do we navigate that?
Great reflection. Dancing is easier because we can choose not to dance with someone the next time. Attending to yourself first is the trickiest part.
This is so beautiful Aydan! You sure describe the dance as it is. The embrace, the sense of your partner as you move with the music-both of you become one in the moment. Thanks for writing this blog.
Thanks Elisa. Great having you as part of the community.