Attention is an antidote to entropy

The weeds in the garden grow each day until they take over the surroundings, and the beautiful garden becomes not so beautiful to the human eye. You prevent such overgrowth by caring for the garden regularly. Paying attention to it prevents entropy from overtaking it.

Entropy is the inevitable force of destruction and death. All organisms are subject to it, including humans: our bodies, minds, organs, and cells. Everything moves toward death at different speeds depending on the attention placed on it.

Where you place attention slows down entropy in some ways, and even injects life into the object of attention in new ways. Attention is never-ending, and so is interest. Everything is interesting if you choose to be interested. This is a constant choice of engaging and paying attention to the internal and external, because one doesn’t exist without the other.

You can attend to the breath and notice its rising and falling, supported by and supporting the entire body; you can attend to your mother needing or asking for help in a specific circumstance; the garden; the house; and everything else possible.

This is the practice of “cultivating one’s own garden”, which ultimately has ripple effects on everyone else you interact with, which is a byproduct and not the objective of the game. The practice itself has no objective, yet objectives are sometimes useful as containers to develop certain skills.

Note that many things ask for attention, and few of them deserve it. You shape what you attend to, and with the same token, what you attend to shapes you.