====== Distractions of the day ======

[[2025-09]]-21

In the Quaker Meeting this morning I was musing over the line in Four Quartets
> [[https://www.simongrant.org/Eliot/4Q.html#BN_101|Distracted from distraction by distraction]]
and how I have been so badly caught up in that.

Distraction is symptomatic of the ADD part of [[wp>ADHD]]. Why, I wondered. Not hard to see some plausible reasons.

Being distracted – from some emotional distress – helps to protect one from feeling that distress. The other side also: hyperfocus on some preferably intellectual task inhibits the awareness of distressing emotions. Easiest if the emotions are blanked off completely. Next best: if the arise, fall into distraction.

Quaker worship can potentially help, as perhaps any meditative practice can help: not (at all) by getting rid of those pesky distressing emotions, but rather by letting oneself sink down below distractions — below distractability. Being there, one can 
> … … [[https://www.simongrant.org/Eliot/4Q.html#EC_123|wait without hope]]\\ For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,\\ For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith\\ But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.\\ Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:\\ So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.


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