Focus and unity of life

I SUPPOSE it’s part of development, especially of technological progress, that more and more things are now brought to our attention. As a result, we often find ourselves losing focus and even our train of thought.

Our attention gets scattered and dispersed, our thoughts become shallow and narrow, our reactions turn automatic and involuntary. These and more are now increasingly observable, causing concern and even alarm among many people.

I’ve seen yuppies showing these symptoms of lack of focus. Though still young, capable and flexible, they often do not know their limits and end up truly getting harassed and stressed out by the many things they have to handle and orchestrate.

With emails and text messages to receive and send, blogs and websites to manage, stock updates, message alerts, meetings, teleconferencing, phone calls, etc. they can’t help but get increasingly confused and disoriented. Priorities turn chaotic, often held captive by mere instincts and raw impulses.

This phenomenon is also exacting a high toll on relations within the family, among friends and colleagues. The indispensable human touch is vanishing. Everyone seems to be building a wall around oneself. Sociability is nothing more than a mask.

Indeed, there’s now a deeply felt need to tackle this spreading predicament, and some serious studies are now undertaken to confront this challenge.

Still, most of the efforts remain in the purely human and natural level, examining the psychological or sociological aspects, etc., but hardly beyond. Though some helpful data can be derived, I’m afraid these studies will fall short of the goal. We should not just prescribe a placebo for this illness.

We have to understand that the problem is basically a spiritual and moral one. It cannot be effectively solved by treating the symptoms only. We need to identify and isolate the virus itself, and destroy it.

And the ultimate culprit is that we are losing our unity of life, since we have lost the real source and power of unity and focus. This is none other than God. A unity and focus not based on one’s relationship with God is at best a pseudo-unity.

It will be a unity that is built on the externals, with no real foundation in our hearts. Sooner or later, the anomaly will be exposed or the appearance will simply collapse.

Only God, the living God, our Creator and Father, as well as our Savior and Sanctifier, can provide us with the real principle of unity in our life. We would be fooling ourselves if we don’t go all the way to recognize this basic truth about us.

This, of course, is a truth of faith, not so much of science. And that’s where the problem lies. There is a crisis of faith in the world, especially involving those who rely more on their human abilities than on belief in God.

It’s a phenomenon that can call to mind two contrasting dramatic stories in the Bible. One is the story of the Tower of Babel, and the other is the story of Pentecost.

In the episode of the Tower of Babel, those who survived the flood have multiplied and have gotten so intoxicated by their powers and good fortune that they now want to reach heaven by their own efforts alone, by building a tower.

God intervenes, as he always does in our life, and confounds them by making them speak different languages so that they will not understand each other anymore. The project ends in total failure, and new troubles emerge for the people.

The story of Pentecost offers a counterpoint. We have different people speaking different languages. But since they believe, they are filled with the Holy Spirit. This is how they get to understand each other.

They are not made into a uniformed mass. The differences are respected and even fostered. And yet there is unity among them, with a certain focus of attention that is a result of such unity.

We have to reiterate the truth that we need God to have a solid, genuine unity of life and an unwavering focus even in the midst of so many things in our life.

We just have to learn how to strengthen our relation with God, overcoming our natural awkwardness and difficulties, knowing how to pray, studying and assimilating the doctrine, availing of the sacraments, rectifying our intention, developing the virtues, observing proper priorities, etc.