June 23
Thousands of things are pressing on my senses at this moment, and yet they never become part of my experience. Why? Because they do not concern me. My experience is what I consent to attend to. Only what is attended to shapes the mind.
Psychology (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Thousands of things are pressing on my senses at this moment, and yet they never become part of my experience. Why? Because they do not concern me. My experience is what I consent to attend to. Only what is attended to shapes the mind.
When you talk with someone about a trip you took together, you may find that the two of you remember different trips. You think of the quarrel at the station; the other person thinks of the bakery with the far too sweet croissants. Neither of you is wrong. You were in the same place, and yet you did not take away the same thing.
You could call that a choice, except that you didn't choose. That the quarrel stayed with you longer than the pastries was down to something that was there before the trip: what usually concerns you. This consent happens earlier than any decision, and from the inside it looks like mere perception.
That is where the difficulty lies. You can resolve to attend to other things. But what you overlook does not announce itself as an omission. It is simply missing, without leaving a gap.
Sometimes someone points it out to you. Then the croissants suddenly come back to you, or at least you think they do, and you can no longer say whether the image comes from your memory or from their telling.
