NEW ATTENTION SPAN EXERCISE FOR BOOMERS

My attention span may not be growing, but it’s not getting any help either.

I need to tighten up.

The big things are still logged in, like my wife’s birthday, our wedding anniversary, kids.

That’s not the concern.

My wife knows every birthday of everyone in her family, my family, her friends, and her friends’ families.

How am I supposed to keep up?

I need to get a grip.

 

 

Which isn’t to say I’m slipping, because I’m not.

The big things are still solid for a mid-century modern guy.

It began with the recent end of the Spanish – American war which cleared a place for the New World at the big boy table of super powers.

Defeating the former world power from the 16th Century was just enough to pull up a chair.

Controlling emerging powers during rapid industrialization of planes, trains, and automobiles, and claiming colonial borders in Africa, wasn’t enough to prevent WWI.

Containing rogue nations like Germany and Japan wasn’t enough to prevent WWII.

The attention span gets stretched keeping up with the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan over the ensuing decades but we all know whose attention never waivers: families of the fallen.

I’ve been lucky, maybe you too?

My Grandpa didn’t die in WWII; my Dad didn’t die in Korea; my uncle didn’t die in Vietnam; I didn’t die in Fort Dix New Jersey; my kids didn’t die in Afghanistan.

We need to push that good luck further out.

 

Cutting The Assumed Attention Span

Have you heard good news and thought, ‘finally it’s about time.’

A fugitive is found, a criminal corralled, a bad man brought down, and you can finally breathe a breath of relief even if it all happened twenty five hundred miles away in a place you’re never heard of.

Our endless news cycle finds important events to report on, and if they run out of important events they report on less important events as if they were the same thing and leave it to our attention spans to sort out.

Then what? Everything is elevated, promoted to great importantance?

Not so fast.

What I sense, what my senses tell me, is just the opposite.

We’re getting dulled down, dumbed down, and it’s not news.

It’s just another disaster, another mass casualty event, another failure of human decency, pass the tabasco.

Just another pompous man with correctile dysfunction, another over-inflated lady with her free freedoms talk, another group of youths partying like a prison riot, who wants the last hush puppy.

If you trim enough, cut just enough, people will believe anything as long as it comes from a trusted source.

When it comes from The Great White Father, Daddy, or Reverend Ralph, it’s as good as gold, like a law, like a commandment written on a stone tablet.

If the mental conditioning is complete, often referred to as brainwashing, people will do what they’re told even if it’s against their own best interests, better judgment, and wishes.

 

What To Do?

Take off the rough edges to see what you’ve really got.

 

 

Smooth over the differences of opinion.

 

 

Find a better angle of approach.

 

 

Tighten down the main concepts and ideas.

Do all that work with the tools you’ve got, and that ought to do it. You’re done.

For now.

I had someone tell me what to do like I was the world’s worst person for not doing it sooner.

So I did it, then added a little extra.

But it wasn’t enough. I’m still portrayed as the world’s worst person.

Luckily I have an attention span that comes to the rescue.

I remember how things were, and what changed.

I remember how things are, and what changed.

I remember what changed, and how it didn’t matter.

What did I change? I changed clothes after exercising my attention span for you, that’s what I changed.

Working hard over here.