presence

Jan 25, 2026

Attention is neither neutral nor passive. It is profoundly active. It is ultimately collaborative.

Attention is a kind of partnership. A co-authoring. We meet the raw material of the world around us, suffuse with texture, contour, and consequence, and what emerges is an alliance that can only be described as cooperative.

entirely effected within - 8.5” x 11” collage

When we pay attention properly, we enter a conversation with matter and time and context and place. With the rich dynamism of an environment that invites us to lean in and then reciprocates. As if a small section of reality was incomplete and unfinished until it was truly witnessed.

“Things change according to the stance we adopt towards them”, Ian McGilchrist says. “The kind of attention we pay actually [and literally] alters the world”. It’s not only a matter of what you look at, but how you do so. How closely. How intently. Not simply hearing but listening. Patiently. Willingly.

Somewhere in the act of attending, everything shifts and sways with a vibrant, open intensity. What we observe becomes reflexive. Responsive. Articulate. We hold out our hearts in our hands when we offer our awareness, and the world answers back with a love letter.

If there is one lesson to be learned from this, just one take away to sit with, it’s that if you want to change the word, if you want to reshape and alter it, we do it through the quality of presence we bring to it.