Quotes About Distraction

Quieres que te prepare algo para comer? —Tú sólo piensas en dos cosas. No aclaró cuáles eran, pero tampoco era necesario

Watch TV or something. That's what the note says. So I say to myself, Fine. But I think I'll do the or something part.

the distraction of business

it was as if everything conspired to keep him from prayer.

There is such a danger of our being more occupied with the things that are coming than with Him who is to come.

Let not the interest of religious thoughts and exercises deceive you; they very often take the place of waiting upon God.

I understood that going where I would actually be foreign might distract people from the more intimate nature of my defining otherness.

We distract ourselves with details. It's a way of coping.

Because technology is devoted primarily to making our lives easier, it discourages us from disciplines, especially ones that involve disentangling ourselves from technology itself.

We are continually being nudged by our devices toward a set of choices. The question is whether those choices are leading us to the life we actually want. I want a life of conversation and friendship, not distraction and entertainment; but every day, many times a day, I'm nudged in the wrong direction. One key part of the art of living faithfully with technology is setting up better nudges for ourselves.

We love the way screens can, almost magically, absorb our children's attention and give us a few moments of quiet in the car or before dinner.

So when we do sit down in front of a TV screen, it will be for a specific purpose and with a specific hope, not just of entertainment or distraction but of wonder and exploration. When we do scroll through social media, it will be to have a chance to give thanks for our friends, enjoy their creative gifts, and pray for their needs, rather than just something to take our mind off our tedium.

Because make no mistake: the videos we put on for our kids—or the video games we pull up on our phones in our own moments of boredom—are designed, unconsciously or consciously, to produce a bewitching effect. And that effect is achieved by filling a screen with a level of vividness and velocity that does not exist in the real world—or only very rarely. Because it is rare, we instinctively respond to it, and indeed take delight in it.

You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things

Exactly! We run or we lose ourselves in something, somebody, anything to try and ease our pain.

but it was hard to give the real world much notice when he was this close.

Sorry, Mary Anne, I can't hear you!" I shouted into the phone receiver. Mary Anne Spier cleared her throat and began, "I said, hi, I really missed you, and —" "EEEEEEEE!" That was my two-year-old sister, Emily Michelle, racing through the kitchen. Behind

I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It was Kristy, sitting behind me in a seat by herself. "Stacey?" she said. "I've got a terrible problem." "What is it?" I asked, alarmed. "The theme from Gilligan's Island is running through my head and I can't get rid of it.

In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering.

Primarily, that means learning to recognize thoughts as thoughts—as transient appearances in consciousness—and to no longer be distracted by them, if only for short periods of time.

We spend our lives lost in thought. The question is, what should we make of this fact? In the West, the answer has been "Not much." In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering.

The first sign of progress will be noticing how distracted you are. But if you persist in your practice, you will eventually get a taste of real concentration and begin to see thoughts themselves as mere appearances arising in a wider field of consciousness.

Another time, after failing to get my attention as I participated in a White House conference call on Russia sanctions, Declan stomped away, muttering, "Putin, Putin, Putin . . . When is it going to be Declan, Declan, Declan

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.