It’s no secret, I’ve always been a spacey kid.

Aloof, distracted, loopy or even stoned.

If I were to sum up twenty-five years of feedback from teachers, professors, coworkers, managers, my friends and family it would come out to the all-too-familiar line:

He’s a bright kid, only if he paid attention…

Sound familiar?

Absentminded, distrait, spaced-out, daydreaming. These are all words used to label a similar condition.

The Russian word encompassing this condition is: Рассеянный

A slightly more literal translation would give you: scattered, divided, split into many.

So what is a scattered brain? How does it become divided? And most importantly, how does it become whole again?

Ever since I can recall, I’ve been infatuated with the world around me. I am an extrovert through and through, in the often misunderstood Jungian definition of the word, which is:

“An attitude-type characterized by concentration of interest on the external object”

As a child anything and everything peaked my curiosity. Attention was pure and immediate. The world was shiny, bright and exciting. As a tiny three year old with thin golden locks and an over-sized head, I crawled slowly around my parents bed catching the little butterflies printed on their bed-sheet.

Оп!

Оп, поймал!

At that age attention wasn’t a commodity, it flowed openly and freely out into the world. Lingering only as long as necessity was felt. Like a bird finding the perfect spot to build its nest; it tested out each branch, each leaf, each spec for quality. It conducted millions upon millions of tiny experiments through each interaction with the outside world. Attention was raw, it was nude and it was vulnerable. You burst into tears when you stubbed your foot on a piece of Lego. You laughed in ecstasy when someone made a funny face. Full-embodiment was not an idea, it was felt.

When I was about thirteen I started working as an assistant music teacher at a music studio in my neighborhood. It was my second job, I was already fired from my first job delivering newspapers in early spring of the same year. Sorting, packaging and delivering the newspaper weekly through a particularly snowy Canadian winter, I was deemed inadequate by spring time and dismissed for cause. I often missed certain fliers in my sorting process, or as it happened in one specific instance; I left two of the same No-Frills fliers in one newspaper, a cardinal sin which earned me severe chastising from a senior citizen right off of her doorstep and a disappointed call from my manager later that week. So when I got the job at the music studio, I was very happy to get a fresh start.

In retrospect I feel that shouldn’t have started teaching anyone anything at such a young age. Being thirteen I was neither technically advanced or mature enough to handle the responsibilities of being an authority in another person’s life. But money is money, and the ‘child-volunteer’ model is alive and well even in the developed world, a subject I look to address in more depth in another essay.

However what may have been lacking from a financial perspective, was generously recuperated in valuable life lessons. What I was able to take away from first real job of over 8 years was immense. I grew as a person, I became a better musician, I became a more patient and caring human being. All that came from standing up to the demands of another, through being responsible to someone other than yourself. Learning to hold and maintain focus (groove) and passing that valuable skill to a younger generation. Learning to form relationships with students, parents and colleagues. Regardless of the socio-economic context, standing firmly in the foundation of life, the experience was able gave back life, much the way a farmer bares the fruits of his labour.

It is this most fundamental and rewarding life-cycle that is so often missing in our modern formulation of “work.” But that’s a conversation for another day.

There it goes again, my scattered brain…

“Hello there young man, could you come into my office?”

One of the managers at the music studio was just passing through the reception area and happened to bump into me: thirteen years old, tall and lanky with messy hair, untucked dress-shirt and a glazed-over look in my eyes.

“I just want to have a quick word with you.”

I nod with a little confusion and walk after him to his office at the very end of the music studio passing door after door of classrooms with the cacophony of “A, G, F sharp! F Sharp! A” seeping through the cracks.

“Here, have a seat. Sit down.. relax!” he says as I come in.

“What’s your name?”

I quickly give my name and description of my relatively short tenure.

“Okay, okay I understand, well you know it’s just very simple: when you’re at work you have to look professional. Simple as that. You don’t want people to think you’re a bum, do you? So tuck in that shirt, comb that hair and stand up nice and straight! Ok? Alright, now you stay out of trouble! Go on, go!”

And off I went. Tucking in my dress-shirt as I went down the hall quickly running my hand through the mop of hair on my head.

There! Fixed it.

Many years later, that very same manager with whom I became very close friends, shared his first impression of me. He said I looked like I just finished smoking a big blunt before casually rolling right into work. I chuckle at that description. I don’t even think I knew what weed was at that point…

Dazed.

Attention has value, immense value…

In today’s world, attention can be measured, weighed, calculated and optimized for. It the metric by which tech giants are able to move millions in capital. Eyes in front of screens mean $$$

My scattered-brain can go into a million avenues from this topic alone and attempt to blame the system, the technology, the media, the maliciously addictive products that are being shoved down our throats at every second on one end or the pharmaceutical companies waiting for us on the other. But instead I’ll try something different.

I’ll focus my attention on attention itself:

Value giving.

When human being pay attention they demonstrate value and appreciation in whatever or whoever it is they are watching. The isolation of our pupils allows others to follow our gaze, to follow our focus of attention. It is an inherent human mechanism that evolved through time. It is how we show trust. How we bond with close friends and lovers. How we show our appreciation to our favourite TV shows, artists and sports matches. In many ways attention is what gives life it’s fourth dimension.

To witness and be witnessed.

“Ok kid, we do things a little differently here so…”

A cursed phrase for any seasoned service industry professional. Each restaurant, cafe, banquet hall or convention center prides itself in “doing things a little differently here..”

“Ok, so you’re going to take this bin of silverware and polish it thoroughly with this blue cloth here, see?”

“Once you are done you’re going to take one fork, one knife and one clean napkin and fold them together like this..”

“No, no, no! Like this..”

Particularity seems to be the reflection a scatter-brain would see in the mirror of opposites.

Laser sharp narrow-mindedness. Unwavering, stubborn and strong-willed. It is the force that digs tunnels deep into the earth’s core and ejects sky-scrappers that touch the vapors of the thinnest clouds. It is the builder of civilizations and creator of breathtaking works of art. Of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Multi-National Corporations of the modern day. If humanity had any superpower, it would be focus. Much like sunlight concentrated at the tip of a magnifying glass, undivided human attention can harness the power of a thousand suns and leave a lasting impact on the object of its focus.

But what if instead of an object, its focus was on a living, breathing human subject?

What if such attention burned its mark into your very flesh?

“Are you fucking stupid?”

I’m doing everything in my power to hold back the tears welling up in my eyes, already itchy and red from earlier bursts of crying.

“What does this spell? Read it a letter at a time! Come on, you’ve seen these fucking letters a million times already..”

On the page is the word THROUGH /THro͞o/

What a god awful English word. 7 letters for 3 simple sounds.

I stare at it, but I am in million places at once. I am desperately trying to remember what I’ve “already seen” before. Why is there a G? and two Hs? I am thinking of my friends who I can hear playing outside, laughing as they chase one another around the block. I am contemplating what they must’ve thought when they heard my dad yell: “Tell ’em to fuck off” when I opened the door to decline their offer to come outside and play.

Sometimes a scattered brain is a scattered heart.

So often it feels that we attribute the issue of a scattered brain to a lack of cognitive ability. Or a lack of effort or willpower. And yet as any scatter-brain would attest; that’s very often far from the truth.

Through-out my life I was always been a try-hard. A term I learned to accept and appreciate as a compliment. And yet it was also extremely unhealthy; I was trying too hard, too often too much. Trying to think about everything all the time. Re-think, over-think, process and analyze every move, every gesture. The exterior impression of aloofness often acted as mask to the underlying boiling pot of thoughts: conflicting ideas, elaborate tangents…and most importantly: raw emotion.

What if in hopes of healing the scattered brain we begin by looking in a completely wrong place?

Strong habits, discipline and focus are absolutely invaluable tools in a person’s life. They allow you to be an active agent in the world: to create, to shape, to manifest not only in the mind of the imagination but out there, in the real world. They bring together, structure and organize the scattered landscapes of the mind and give it a real world feeling through embodied action.

And yet, as powerful as these tools may be and as hard as we may work to sharpen them, they are still merely that: tools. They are irrelevant without a strong grounding in life. In our inherent relationship with each other and the world as a whole. As in the crudest of examples: the Third Reich didn’t have an issue with focus and discipline.

A specific manager from my days at a social-research call-center comes to mind. She was one tough cookie and would give the average SS officer a run for his money. After finishing a particularly grueling evening of cold-calling random strangers with long, detailed, multiple-choice mental health surveys for CAMH, the tired and numbed-out employees lined up one by one in front of her booth. Her job was to validate each persons contribution to social science that day and grace the incredibly ugly piece of paper called the time-sheet with her personal autograph.

As one can imagine, the last five to ten minutes of a shift were always restless and many people began to line up a little early to be able to leave this godforsaken place right on time. On this day I happened to be one of those people.

I came forward and handed my time-sheet to the manager. The total number of hours listed for that day was 4:00.

She looked at the paper, then at me, then at the clock, then back at the paper. In one blitz movement she crossed out 4:00 and put down 3:56.

Precision!

The she looked back at me sternly without a word. I couldn’t help but laugh. Astonished and chucking with disbelief I waved her goodbye and headed out.

I sure learned a lesson that day. But it definitely wasn’t one she intended.

In the past 30 days how many times have you seriously contemplated suicide?

This was the prompt up on the screen as I was listening to a man describe his divorce, the loss of custody of his two kids and the meager retirement as a life-long school bus driver. The prompt recommend the following answers:

1. 0–5 times a week

2. 5–10 times a week

3. 10–20 times a week

4. More than 20 times a week

I was lucky that night since no manager was listening in on my conversation. I had the freedom to make my own judgement call. Do I ask the question or do I stop the survey? Or do I type in a random answer and continue in hopes that the other questions won’t be as awful to ask a stranger I met 7:14 min earlier.

I hit 1 and continued with the next question. My mind was scattered, as was my heart. Coming out of a relationship of over two years that ended in a blaze, failing most of my classes in school, accumulating higher and higher levels of debt as I moved back in with my immigrant parents into a rented apartment in North York. I was a prime candidate for the very research I was conducting.

An over-the-phone multiple-choice mental health surveys?

Are you fucking kidding me.

With likes of Nietzsche, Adorno, Pirsig and Henry spinning their grave, we yet again prioritize science and progress ahead of life, ahead of human beings. We would rather spend money to study mental health, to investigate it as an object, to collect raw data, than to actually face the reality of human suffering. Clearly well-funded and by generous people with good intentions (on top of the contributions of the average tax payer) these programs are intended to help other humans participate in a rich and fulfilling life. Help them feel whole.

Heck if you just payed the same employees to call random people and chat about their day, that would have had a more positive effect on mental health of the community than this absolutely rotten, perverse joke of a study.

When we let our methods dominate our hearts we become the very tools we wish to use.

If scatter-brained in that situation meant: capable of feeling, capable of being affected by the world, then yes, I am proud to have been scattered. It seems that in hope of “fixing” our scattered brain we attempted to shut out our scattered hearts.

In seem that the crowning judgement to befall the scatter-brained is this:

A scattered brain can hold no values.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that you are uncertain and scattered about a specific situation does not mean you hold no values. It means you are human and are conflicted about a complicated situation. It means that there’s more to this than meets the eyes. I means that unlike some of the numbed-out ultra-focused, you can’t ignore the blaring sirens of your scattered heart. It simply means that you’re a human like everybody else.

So how does one begin to mend a scattered heart?

It seems that we really don’t have many tools in place when it comes to that. For all our advances in science and technology, humans are no more whole today then they were a few hundred years ago. In fact I’d argue we’ve lost a good deal of tools that were incredibly effective to our development as a species, something I look to delve deeper in another essay. To be 100% clear, this not an idealization of the past, I know full well that humanity has improved almost across all fundamental living standards: reducing widespread disease and violence and increasing the average lifespan. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. It seems that a lot of fundamental human needs slipped through the rigid fibers of the high-grade scientific filter.

Over the years I began to listen more closely to the scattering of my own heart. To tune into what is making me twitch, making me slip, making me stutter. Each slip could be just that: an error, a misfiring, a technical malfunction. But as any good doctor knows, it may also be a symptom of a larger problem.

What I’ve battled with a lot of over the past few years was understanding where the immaturity and carelessness of my youth ended and the complete and utter rejection of the brutality of the status quo began. Only now do I begin to feel confident about where that line lies.

As a new generation we live in extremely difficult times where we must not only find and develop a confidence in ourselves, but also, do so engulfed in the disconnected, morally corrupt and out-of-control trajectory of the human race. In our time and age, to stand up and to feel whole one must take into account a million different factors, in an overwhelming and ironic twist. Being focused isn’t enough, neither is being open.

So how and when do we feel whole?

Everyone has had a “peak-state” experience at least once in their life. The full alignment of brain, heart and body. Full embodiment as you shoot that basketball in a beautiful swishhh. The way you pull that very last carrot out of your beloved garden. Or the way you feel after wrapping-up a particularly nasty piece of code, hitting F5 and watching it run with no errors. Bliss…

Scatter-brained or laser-focused alike, this feeling is what so many of us live for, chase after and with a combination of good habits in place, hopefully fall into a loving and fruitful relationship with. I have been fortunate to experience this feeling with everything from picking wild mushrooms to writing elaborate rants on the internet.

It’s what makes us feel alive.

So what makes this experience so potent? So visceral and raw?

And can we package it for re-consumption as so many how-to, the-art-of, and 10 best ways articles attempt to do.

Yes? May be? Why not?

It seems a better question here is:

What can we do to make this breed of experience more common, more accessible and more enriching for ourselves and those around us?

It seems that attention is the one commodity that we can truly call ours. In an existentialist twist, I challenge you to take responsibility for your attention. As we so often witness, loving attention can shape the world around us in an incredible way. It can nourish, can build, can create and allow us to truly blossom as human beings. Lack of attention, or overtly critical, nihilistic, cynical and unproductive attention seeps life from both the witness and the witnessing. It ruins the game for all of us.

The Internet appears to have put this whole mechanism on steroids. Today we can broadcast our judgement, our hate and our negativity with lightning speed. We can put down and destroy a person from across the globe and feel zero consequences hidden behind our screens. But is it really worth it? Republican or Democrat, scattered-brain or ultra-focused alike, we have to learn to share this world we find ourselves in. We have to learn to play together, like a case of really stubborn and unruly kids who’s parent’s didn’t buy that toy they really wanted. We have to grow up, to learn to play once more like happy little children we remember ourselves to be.

After all, isn’t that what we all want to do? To be lost in our “peak moments”

Knowing full well that we will be caught in the trust and respect of the “normal moments” we all share together. Moments where we work together, collaborate and build that very game we want to play together, over and over and over again.

- Sanya, June 7th, 2020