'Away' means 'I've stopped paying attention'; it doesn't mean 'gone'. We speak of 'paying' attention, because it costs us. There are so many demands on our attention.
We budget. And we have to: the world is unmanageably big these days. To reach round news, social media and our daily lives in the real world, we stretch our attention: it gets thinner and more gappy. It creates a lot of away. Nobody can attend to everything, or even to every aspect of something. What goes into your away?
I bought my son some ethically questionable trainers the other day. He loved them, they fit well, he needed new sports footwear, the shop is run responsibly from the point of view of its local employees. It didn't show pictures of child labour. I knew about it anyway, but chose to prioritise the immediate meeting of our need. My son doesn't know what the logo means. If there had been photos and information, I expect he would have been shocked, and possibly not wanted to buy the trainers. Then we would have trailed around town, all subsequent pairs blighted by comparison with the hugely comfortable, favourite coloured trainers that we hadn't bought. We might well have come home frustrated, empty handed and instead of cheerful, with new shoes and with most of the day left to get out into the sunshine.
I put the manufacture of those trainers into away. I consciously and deliberately refused it my attention, so that we could have a lovely day. Lucky us.
When we throw things away, they don't cease to exist. The people and processes we put into away, people suffering in far off nations, recyclable or organic waste going into landfill, it's all really there. It happens, and it has and will have consequences.
I know that we can't attend to everything. I know that I would rather have bought different trainers, but it's not easy to know where to draw the line. I don't always manage to meet my own minimum standards. It takes a great deal of attention, and emotional effort, and sometimes I'm tired. It doesn't seem something that can be fixed by individual effort - only something that can be made much worse if we don't make as much effort as we can.
We budget. And we have to: the world is unmanageably big these days. To reach round news, social media and our daily lives in the real world, we stretch our attention: it gets thinner and more gappy. It creates a lot of away. Nobody can attend to everything, or even to every aspect of something. What goes into your away?
I bought my son some ethically questionable trainers the other day. He loved them, they fit well, he needed new sports footwear, the shop is run responsibly from the point of view of its local employees. It didn't show pictures of child labour. I knew about it anyway, but chose to prioritise the immediate meeting of our need. My son doesn't know what the logo means. If there had been photos and information, I expect he would have been shocked, and possibly not wanted to buy the trainers. Then we would have trailed around town, all subsequent pairs blighted by comparison with the hugely comfortable, favourite coloured trainers that we hadn't bought. We might well have come home frustrated, empty handed and instead of cheerful, with new shoes and with most of the day left to get out into the sunshine.
I put the manufacture of those trainers into away. I consciously and deliberately refused it my attention, so that we could have a lovely day. Lucky us.
When we throw things away, they don't cease to exist. The people and processes we put into away, people suffering in far off nations, recyclable or organic waste going into landfill, it's all really there. It happens, and it has and will have consequences.
I know that we can't attend to everything. I know that I would rather have bought different trainers, but it's not easy to know where to draw the line. I don't always manage to meet my own minimum standards. It takes a great deal of attention, and emotional effort, and sometimes I'm tired. It doesn't seem something that can be fixed by individual effort - only something that can be made much worse if we don't make as much effort as we can.
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