Attention (Or Why I Keep Not Noticing People Flauting Masking Procedures)

We are succeeding and messing up at the same time all the time. We are focused on these things and distracted from those things simultaneously. We are every second making choices about what’s important and what gets our attention, and so we are inevitably overlooking things that matter.

Ministry under Covid mitigation conditions requires us to focus on things we never had to before, and even after several months it’s a challenge. Getting better about this is a choice, and not simply one of the will, like “I promise to pay better attention.” Attention is limited, and attention diverted to policing masks and distance is attention taken from facilitating your exercise.

The choice is probably one about systems and processes; we can choose to designate someone else to watch out. We can address these matters on their own with the group and ask them to pay attention to one another. We can work on a culture of compliance with mitigation strategies for the benefit of all, particularly those most at-risk and vulnerable.

Attention is a matter of choices made before attention needs paid.

2 thoughts on “Attention (Or Why I Keep Not Noticing People Flauting Masking Procedures)

  1. Maybe it’s like handedness. Some people notice it all the time. I don’t, because right-handers are so common for me to see, while left-handers look like they’re doing things properly (the same way I do). So with masks, it would be using them properly, over the nose and mouth, or commonly, drooping somewhere.

  2. After an insurrection about social distancing mitigation the day before January 6 last year, with our church leaders (some) saying they wish they could have been there storming the capital, masks are not even an option. Even after people in the congregation died from COVID (probably not acquired here).

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s