The Seeker's Mind

You need space in your life for the spotlight of focus—but alone, it would be like a solo oboe player on a bare stage, trying to play Beethoven. You need mind-wandering to activate the other instruments and to make the sweetest music. I thought I had come to Provincetown to learn to focus. I realized that, in fact, I was learning to think—and that

we have to develop individual skills to resist the part inside all of us that succumbs to these distractions.

Focusing on what’s right in front of you, he told me, gives you “some of the raw material that has to be digested, but at some point, you need to stand back from that.”

For many of us, reading a book is the deepest form of focus we experience—you