Where You Place Your Attention.

Every time a great, shared tragedy occurs, like the Staten Island Ferry Crash in 2003, i'm struck by the importance of mindfulness and what can happen when our focus strays from its necessary object.

On the afternoon of Oct. 15, 2003, the ferry slammed into a pier at top speed after the assistant captain operating it, Richard J. Smith, blacked out during the last half mile of the trip from Manhattan to Staten Island. The accident, one of the worst mass transit disasters in the city’s history, ripped the side of the 3,300-ton boat open like a sardine can. People were crushed, mangled and decapitated.

A city rule requiring that two captains be in the pilot house in the front of the ferry while it is in motion was not followed. The captain, Michael J. Gansas, was on board at the time of the crash, but in the pilot house that faced Manhattan, not the one that faced Staten Island, as he should have been. (NYT)

The danger of self-absorption slices my ego wide open. Don't mistake me: i'm not talking about arrogant self-absorption only. The time spent fretting over "my" looks, "my" youth, "my" skin, "my" money, "my" relationships is as wasted as time rhapsodizing to myself over "my" looks, "my" youth, "my" skin, "my" money, "my" relationships. Depressed self-absorption draws us in and in and in till we thoroughly and mistakenly believe that what we do doesn't matter. More precisely, we fail to believe that everything we do matters.

We have to turn that inside out. However we do it - meditation, prayer, volunteering, art, science, family - let's clearly see the impact we have on everyone around us. Trust me: cast your net wide when you consider how many people you touch. If this is hard for you, try this technique. On any given day, from when you wake up till you fall asleep, count the number of people you notice. The deli guy, the girl with the same shoes as Bev, your roommate, the guy you would not have noticed had it not been for his U of M hat. You're gonna lose count, especially if you live in New York City. You can safely assume that the number of people who notice you is just as high. (And probably higher as cute as you are.) And to some degree, those people saw you, acknowledged you, and probably had some sort of opinion about you.

The "big" relationships provide the foundation and skeleton of this self we develop. But the throngs, the masses, the millions? They chisel in detail, character, the just-soness that make us who we are. If we don't pay attention to these mini-relationships, we may find ourselves shaped into a "tower of me-ness" that we neither like nor understand.

I didn't make the shift from thinking only of myself, to considering others because i wanted to be good and altruistic and Zen and whatever other buzzwords are used to describe what happens to you when you cultivate compassion. I made this shift because i saw how much i thought about myself and it made me sick. And then, it made me bored.

Thank God we get away with being self-absorbed so often. And since it cost so many unique lives, let's hope those involved in the ferry crash are learning the appropriate lessons. And let's avoid having to learn such extreme lessons ourselves.