Finding Focus
Finding Focus
September 2026 Musing
Lately, I find myself scattered. Darting from this to that, I lose my train of thought, lose my phone, lose my calm. Why can’t I focus?
One night at a Vision-Journaling class, our instructor, Tish, asks each member to create an intention for the session.
My Intention: Focus/Avoid Distractions.
Creating a collage page always steadies me. But this night I challenge myself to find focus. I dip my brush into the colors that call out: orange, yellow, green. I whirl paint across my page, then leave it to dry and cut out images-a flower, a butterfly, and a small bird. Not stopping to plan, I glue them onto the painted page, placing them where they want to land. The process feels alive, like I’ve grabbed a broom from the corner and swept away unwanted clutter, or as though I’ve pressed a switch to silence notification beeps on my phone. I take a deep breath and exhale, blowing away distraction. Clarity emerges inside of me.
However, my art page may not appear the way you expect: sparse, spacious, clean. After all, it reflects my busy mind. The background is of green, orange, and yellow slaps and splats of paint. On the left side, as though growing upward from the soil, is a daisy-like flower in full bloom, its center a fiery orange, its petals a browning yellow. On the right side, in midair, a paint-splattered pink butterfly flies, wings spread wide. Yet, neither image captures my focused attention. Instead, my focus lies on a tiny yellow-backed bird with black wing feathers and a black-topped head, perched perfectly still on a tree branch, facing away, centered at the bottom of both pages. This yellow-feathered friend is dwarfed by the flower and butterfly on either side. He rests, looking into the distance.
“Your page may inform you.” Tish tells us. And, as usual, she is right. The small, still bird reminds me to stop and gaze outward.
Sue Monk Kidd, in her book “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter,” puts it like this:
For me it is often a lack of focus… (when) my energy runs in dozens of directions – many of them silly tributaries of distraction. (Sometimes) it is best to dam up the tributaries and send the energy thundering in just one direction. All great things are launched on big rivers.
I recall a trip Bill and I made to our hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. We visited the confluence of two mighty rivers: the Mississippi and the Missouri. There we hiked a muddy path to stand at the sandy, gravelly point where the land ends. There, standing still and witnessing Kidd’s imagery firsthand at the point where those two big rivers meet, we felt the thundering power she writes of. Focus found through stillness.
