Every two weeks I put two yellow bags of rubbish out for the recycling lorry to collect. There’s a spot to leave them next to a wall about a hundred paces or so from my house. As I walked that regular route this week I stopped beside this ivy which was growing over the old barn near here. I stopped because I was so attracted to the gorgeous red leaves.
When I stopped to look more closely, I took a photo, then noticed the seed heads everywhere amongst the leaves. What unusual and amazing seed heads I thought.
When I look at this photo again I see the red leaves immediately, then quickly after that I see those amazing seed heads. I let my attention wander across the image. I follow the flow of my attention.
There’s a French word, “flâner”. It means to stroll or to wander. Aimlessly. Well, I say aimlessly because it’s not about walking to get to a destination. The aim of wandering is to wander. A “flâneur” is a wanderer.
In our goal driven busy society simply strolling around, wandering, isn’t really valued very highly. But it feels good to let go of all the “have to”s and the goals and all the narrow driven focus that they entail, and just wander, following the flow of your attention, noticing and wondering, then moving on.
Because here’s one of the fundamental paradoxes of our reality. Our brains have evolved to develop two apparently opposite skills…..focus and a wandering attention.
It turns out we need them both.
Heroes Not Zombies 
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