Ten-Finger Exercises

Focus-- Part Two

The air is very still out my high window this morning, and the angle of the sunlight coming across the branches clearly spells the end of summer. Some leaves are in full brightness, others in dark shadow. There is a poignant look about the quiet scene, poised for change, but I suspect it is only in the eye of the beholder.

Yesterday I thought about focus, and how we use a small bit that we have a clear picture of, and amplify it. Peek through the porthole and see the whole ocean. Take a tiny bit of dialogue, add a few gestures, and you’ve created a character with personality. Gaze at the treetops, motionless against the pale sky, and feel the threshold mood.

Today I remember a different kind of focus. When we were in England seven years ago, there had been an outbreak of mad cow disease and also hoof and mouth, as I recall. It was April, and we were driving between York and Lincoln, and we made a wrong turn. To go back in the direction we intended to go, we took a very small road that wound its way through hills and sheep farms, stopping us from time to time to go through great pans of disinfectant. It began to snow, and we tried to take pictures of the beautiful sheep who might be goners soon. The wet snowflakes slashed against the windows, and the camera insisted on focusing on them instead of beyond the glass and on the sheep, who stood along the fence right beside the narrow road. Most of the pictures came out blurred.

When we focus on something directly in front of our eyes, not only might we obscure what we are trying to see, but we can easily make mountains out of molehills. What is right before us appears so large. It threatens to engulf us, and the best correction is to step back rather than try to fight it off.

Other times, that focus on what is closest at hand, our breathing, say, helps to calm our inner being. If I take a few moments to close my eyes and count my breaths, paying attention to the movement of my abdomen as I inhale, paying attention to the feeling in my nostrils and the sound in my ears as I exhale, I will feel more whole, more attuned to myself.

Maybe our bodies are like instruments that we need to tune up, tightening this string a little, loosening this one. I’m sure that’s true of exercise, that it keeps our joints oiled and our muscles supple. I suppose our minds and our spirits need some focus too, for two different reasons, but still a tightening and a relaxing.

Working sudokus is relaxing to me. It pinpoints my eyes, my pencil and my mind on the numbers in front of me, and the rest of the world falls away. I forget about the new patient I have to visit today, who is an infant, and the anxiety I feel about meeting the family. I forget about the sound of Bill hollering in my ear this morning as he crunched his knee against the corner of the cabinet, jangling my nerves as well as his poor leg.

Staring out this window, or becoming aware of my breathing, do the same thing. They quiet my mind. My energy, that was dispersed every which way by various stressors, comes back to me. Now, I can focus on what is ahead.

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For those of you who wanted an occasional diet up-date, here it is.

One of the many things I hate about dieting is the focus on food, on planning and making the meals, etc. It is so time consuming! It doesn't make sense to me to have food on the brain all the time.

This is day 3, and the Nutri-System diet takes more time to plan than Atkins did. There it was a simple meat and salad. Now I have to add in fruits and dairy and low glycemic carbs and fat at appropriate times.

Bill wanted to try the pancakes for breakfast, and they have to be made from the mix provided, just add milk. Each packet made two pancakes, and they were tasty. Fortunately I had sugar free syrup, which they don't mention or provide. Fortunately or not, I had bought a package of bacon to use, no more than one slice at a time, maybe even half a slice, so that I could cook Bill an allowable fresh egg occasionally. He had three strips in the pan this morning, to cook the pancakes in, and I'm sure that's more than our whole day's fat allowance, maybe even the whole week! Pancakes do soak up the grease. Well, that's our bad for the day, and it did make them flavorful.