You betta Wake up and Pay Attention

I had a group of guys over just for conversation recently. As it usually does, the topic of relationships came up. Specifically the idea that monogamy is impossible for men. Basically the understanding that I hear more and more people coming to is "Men are predisposed to cheating."

Now I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment. I disagree because I haven't cheated on someone I had decided to enter into a monogamous relationship with. Now I will say that is not to say that I wasn't tempted, I was tempted a lot. But I decided that I wanted to hold fast to my commitment to this person so I didn't go through with it.

But it did make me think about something. There is ALOT of visual stimulation out there. There are attractive men and women every where. No matter where you go or what you are doing - unless you are sequestered away - you are going to pass by someone you find attractive. You may even find them more attractive than the person you may be dating or married to. But does that mean that you have to sleep with every person you have a sexual attraction to (that is supposing of course that they are also attracted to you) ?? Of course the answer to that is no. But the constant barrage of attractiveness sure does make it hard [pun intended ;-) ] .

It lead me to realize something - how hard it has become for us to focus our attention. In our fast paced world, before we can get too far with one thing, something that looks or feels better comes our way. Opportunities abound and there is always something to take our attention from where we may decide for it to be.

Take me for example. I started this Philosopher's Challenge with www.philosophersnotes.com. All I have to do is read and contemplate one 6-page synopsis of the major points of a different personal, financial or spiritual development book each day for 100 days. Actually let's be clear that it's 100 weekdays, no new information comes out on the weekend. For added interaction and revelation I could also add my thoughts to a message board about the days reading or at least just read what others thought and learned about the readings.

At this moment I am 5 days behind. (HAAHAA)

Mind you, I did say that there were no readings assigned for the weekends. So here I am a full week behind schedule on something I committed to for my own personal growth. I could have knocked out these 30 pages over the weekend with no problem. Or, hell, I sit at my desk with nothing to really do for probably a good 40-50 percent of my day (might be more but just in case a coworker reads this...lol). But at the end of the day, what have I done....

Well in a day I have probably...

• Clicked on the Facebook icon about 200 times to refresh and see if any friends updated statuses.
• Clicked through friends of friends to see who knows who and if I know any of them (or if they are cute...lets be real...lol)
• refreshed my gmail page about 50 times to see if new emails came in (not like it doesn't refresh itself and shows how many new messages in the browser header)
• Played games on my iPhone
• Taken a 20 minute nap

I am sure I could have listed more things that I gave my attention to instead of the things I could be doing to improve my life, but it's depressing me...LOL And when we take the time to focus on how much time we waste, we waste time focusing on feeling bad because of the time we wasted.

So I think even with the idea of cheating, we are not using our God given ability to focus our attention on this person who brings joy into our lives. We aren't paying attention to that person or to what it takes to keep the romance of the relationship alive. We are paying attention to our fears of being hurt and abandoned, fears of being bored, fears of missing out on "better sex", or having a "better person." In our fear of missing out on something, we may be missing out on the greatest blessing to come into our lives.

As Lauren Hill sang in Sister Act 2, "If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere, you betta wake up and pay attention!"

Focus on who and what you have right now. By allowing your attention to waver, you are missing all of the blessings that this person who is available to you right now has to bring into your life. Focusing your attention into this person and basking in the joy that you feel when you are with them are the best things you can do for one another.

We will build better relationships and all around better lives when we can harness the power of focusing our attention on what we want and ignoring distractions. As a matter of fact, I am going to grab some lunch and focus on the person I have been blessed with and see what new ways I can come up with to let them know I care. Hmmmmmmm....