Attention is not a skill we acquire, like knitting or fencing. It is a state of mind, an orientation. We don’t so much learn attention as turn toward it. This pivot only happens when we pause, like Socrates, and get out of our own head. “Decreation,” Weil calls it. I prefer Iris Murdoch’s term: “unselfing.” The British novelist and philosopher describes one such moment of unselfing.
