Another excerpt from “Attention Surplus” (which is “100 meditative propositions that reframe the concept of ADD from a strength- and empowerment-based perspective”):

[continued from Part 1]

27.  Congratulations to you if you have an unfocused mind!

28.  I repeat: your “attention deficit” is an attention surplus.

29.  Indeed, by not getting stuck on one thing, you manage to track many things.

30.  A distractible mind is an agile mind.

31.  A mind that cannot be distracted is a non-reactive mind.  That’s an evolutionary minus.

32.  A mind that is easily distracted is a reactive mind. That’s an evolutionary plus.

33.  Recognize: mind is hopelessly one-track: mind is zero-sum: mind is “either/or.”

34.  Recognize: distractibility is mind’s attempt to keep track of more than one thing at a time.

35.  Recognize: distractibility is an openness to stimuli, an openness to context.

36.  That’s why I keep saying: “attention deficit” is actually “attention surplus.”

“Attention Surplus: Rethinking ADD” (P.  Somov, 2012)

Blind justice (that doesn’t see the inevitable context of any given event) isn’t justice.  Such blind justice is plain old ignorance.

But the justice that sees (the justice that factors in the context) is no justice either.  The justice without the blindfold - the justice that looks at you, sees you as you, and then judges you according to your perfectly imperfect limitations – is simply the bias of compassion.

To restate: blind justice is ignorance and justice that sees is bias.

So, what do we have here?  A word “justice.”  An empty word and a bit of old poetry: “Justice is just what is” (1).

The word “forgiveness” has a lot more existential resonance to my ear than the empty legalistic echo of the word “justice.”

References:

(1) Totem of Tautology: From a Sense of “i” to a Sense of Awe! (P. Somov)

You have two options in regard to emotional eating: you can try to eliminate it altogether or you can try to make better use of it by making emotional eating more conscious. The latter would be consistent with the goals of harm reduction, a humanistic form of psychotherapy that offers a pragmatic risk-reduction approach to managing problematic behaviors.

3 Principles of Mindful Emotional Eating

If becoming a mindful emotional eater is the goal you’d like to pursue, the following three principles will help you transition from mindlessly-reactive emotional eating to mindfully-conscious emotional eating in moderation:

1) when eating to cope with emotions, accept emotional eating as a legitimate coping choice, not a coping failure;

2) when eating to cope with emotions, follow a predictable eating ritual, with clear start and end points;

3) when eating to cope with emotions, remember that emotional eating does not have to mean emotional overeating.

Following these guidelines will help you approach emotional eating with a sense of control.

An excerpt from “Attention Surplus” (which is “a hundred meditative thoughts that reframe the concept of ADD from a strength- and empowerment-based perspective”):

1. A focused mind is a closed mind: to pay attention to one thing is to ignore another thing.

3. Mind is one-track: to pay attention to “this” is to ignore “that.”

4. Attention is zero-sum: to see one thing is to be blind to another thing.

5. That’s how attention works.  And that is normal.