At the beginning of the year, I wrote about the morning ritual I wanted to keep after spending time alone in the Klein Karoo. Rising before sunrise, a brisk walk up the mountain, a slow cup of coffee and three pages in my journal.
Then I injured my back. The vigorous walks had to stop, and I suddenly had a free hour every morning with nowhere in particular to go.
So, I started walking around my garden instead.
When I moved into the house, a few old climbing roses were neglected and showed little potential.
They also had an enemy. A large, grey, prehistoric-looking bug that sucked the sap from the rose buds until they wilted and died. I don’t like spraying chemicals, and the internet offers only one other remedy. Find them and remove them, one by one.
So, my first task every morning became a bug hunt, a cup of herbal tea in hand.
Something unexpected happened in the process. I started noticing everything. What was flourishing and what needed water. What was struggling and needed feeding. I tended to some of it myself, and I could explain the rest better to my wonderful gardener.
Today the garden is a delight. Because I removed the first bugs early, they never multiplied, and they seem to have disappeared. The roses are blooming so profusely that the neighbours have commented on their delightful beauty.
My new ritual hasn’t replaced the mountain walks. But it has kept me mobile and given me arguably as much joy and reflective time.
It also made me realise how rarely we give anything our full attention these days, and how whatever we attend to tends to thrive. That holds for the good and the bad.
Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, has spent two decades measuring how long people focus on a screen before switching. In 2004, it was about two and a half minutes. Today it averages 47 seconds. We read less. We are distracted by our children, our partners and our work. We do almost everything with half our mind somewhere else.
Our financial lives suffer too. Money, like a garden, needs regular and unglamorous attention. At Foundation, we are finding it harder than before to get clients to complete the necessary documentation, give their full attention in our meetings, and follow through on important decisions. Attention isn’t the only reason, but it is a big part of it.
I am not exempt. For months, a few important items sat on my own to-do list. During my break, which I wrote about last week, I deliberately gave them my attention. Two big ones are finally ticked off. Yes, they needed time, but they also needed attention. They needed me to look at them.
It boils down to attention.
I’m so glad I paid attention to my roses. They give me so much joy. They didn’t need chemicals or more water. They needed me to walk past them every morning and look.
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Kind regards,
Sunél
