Article September 1, 2008 Issue

MY PUSHBACK AGAINST DISTRACTION

BY CAROL MCFALL

THE SPLISH SPLISH sound under my feet in the hallway alerted me to what was happening in the laundry room nearby. The dog's water dish! I rushed to turn off the faucet and gauge the aftermath of "the flood."

I'd been filling the dish in the laundry room sink when I decided to make a quick phone call. Afterward, I moved to the computer to try to pin down a Bible verse that had been rolling around in my head—something about wholeheartedness—completely losing track of my original task. As a newspaper article I'd just been reading cautioned, I'd been spreading myself too thin.

After cleaning up the laundry room "flood," I thought back to the movie I'd watched the night before with Brad Pitt trekking through a mountainous landscape in Seven Years in Tibet. When the young Dali Lama asked him what he loved about mountain climbing, his life's passion, something caught my attention. Pitt's character mentioned "the focus." No distractions, only now. Only the mountain. You start up the mountain, and things clarify, simplify. Colors intensify.

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