Attention as an act of love

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I just finished reading the book The Siren’s Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes. I couldn’t put it down. The title of the book is based on a scene in The Odyssey, in which Odysseus resists the tempting call of sirens by plugging his ears with wax and tying himself to the mast of his ship. Hayes discusses what attention even is, and how it transformed from a state of conciousness to a commodity bought and sold under capitalism in the “Attention Economy.” It was especially interesting from the perspective of someone like Hayes, who is a cable news host for MSNBC and thus a major player in the Attention Economy himself. 

My attention and attention span is something I’ve thought about a lot, which is why I picked up the book.

This is the first in a three part series I will be publishing on my thoughts on the concept of attention in different contexts. The first is attention in relation to relationships. This is a concept that’s been on my mind since my sophomore year, when I read Sense and Sensibility for an English lit class. 

Attention as an act of love (major spoiler alert for Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen)

I wrote a midterm paper in my sophomore year Post 1800’s English Lit class on the use of the word attention in Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. The prompt of the paper was to choose a commonly recurring word in one of the novels we had studied and analyze its definition and importance in the book. 

To summarize part of it, the thesis of my paper was that Austen argues that paying “attention” to someone is an act of true love. She illustrates this using the love triangle between one of the heroines, Marianne, and her suitors John Willoughby and Colonel Brandon. 

Both men appear to pay a lot of attention to Marianne, but the difference in the quality and kind of that attention is what reveals their character and the sincerity of their love for her. Colonel Brandon’s “true” attention to her is (like him) quiet, genuine, and focused. Willoughby’s “false” attention to her is (like him) loud, shallow, and self-serving. Unsurprisingly, Colonel Brandon is the one that Marianne marries in the end. 

There’s one scene I love that really illustrates the concept. Marianne is a gifted pianist. She is playing a few songs for a small crowd at a party and they are “in raptures” over her talent, praising her constantly and acting overly enthusiastic for the music in order to please her. By contrast, Colonel Brandon stands still and silent.  He just listens to her play. Marianne, who takes a lot of pride in her music, is annoyed at the crowd and describes them as having “a want [lack] of taste.” They are performing attention to her without paying attention to her. They aren’t actually listening to the music she has worked so hard to learn how to play. There’s a very subtle exchange of attention between Marianne and Brandon that foreshadows the upcoming shift in their relationship, where in that moment she pays attention to him paying attention to her. She’s grateful to him, noting that he was the only person in the room who “paid her only the compliment of attention.” 

Brandon’s attention is a “compliment” because paying attention takes effort. Brandon made the effort in the past to learn that music is important to her. Sacrificing his “taste” to please her like the crowd did would be self-serving, an attempt to manipulate her feelings in his direction. Simply focusing on her skill is generous and selfless. It’s a kind of attention that does not expect anything in return, and Marianne observes that.

The fact that this scene is about music is notable too. Music is something that represents her inner life and personality. Willoughby wasn’t at the party, but consistently acts more like the crowd Marianne was so annoyed by. He showers Marianne with praise and affection, but only notices or cares about Marianne’s surface charm and beauty. In fact, there is one parallel scene where she tries to discuss Gothic literature with him, and he blindly agrees with anything she says without actually listening to what she says. Instead, the narrator says his focus is on the "brightness of her eyes."

Willoughby never pays her genuine attention because he doesn't truly love her. It's easy for him to leave her for a wealthier girl whose family can offer him more money. Marianne was easily manipulated, investing her "attention" onto the "wrong" person. When she realizes Willoughby doesn't love her like she thought he did, she is completely blindsided and falls into a deep and painful despair.

That moment by the piano is how we know that Brandon, in contrast, truly cares for her before Marianne even realizes it. His attention is how he expresses and proves his love.

It's kind of obvious when you think about it. When you really care about someone, you notice their feelings, their likes and dislikes, the subtle changes in their mood that day, their mannerisms, the precise color of their eyes. Consciously or not, you’re paying attention to them. We only have so much attention, and if you didn’t care about them, you'd just invest that attention somewhere else. 

In The Siren’s Call, Hayes discusses how relationships could be defined as an exchange of meaningful amounts of attention, which I thought was interesting. Relationships rely on both people in the relationship consistently paying enough attention to each other to want to keep knowing each other. They also rely on conversation. In order to have a good conversation, both people have to pay attention to what the other is saying close enough to come up with a meaningful response. A conversation where one person is distracted is going to be frustrating and unfulfilling. 

Hayes argues that receiving attention from other people is a non-negociable psychological need. When someone pays attention to us, it feels good because it is a recognition of another person recognizing your existence and humanity. To him, people feel the impulse to post on social media to feel the rush we are wired to feel from attention and care from other people. Even if that attention is ultimately negative or hollow. When we don’t receive any attention, it feels like a rejection of your complexity and humanity, that you aren’t “special” enough to warrant that attention. He cited a long history of studies finding that neglect and isolation, things resulting from an absence of attention, have consistently more damanging psychological effects than outright abuse. 

In Hayes’ book, he makes the argument that most conflict in relationships can be traced back to a mismatch of attention. Someone who gives a lot of emotional support to their partner but doesn’t receive it back. Someone who is constantly reaching out to a friend to make plans without receiving much of a returned effort. A parent who’s teenager ditches a family dinner to hang out with friends. The formula is that Person A is paying attention to the needs of someone else, and Person B is not willing or able to pay the same amount of attention in return. 

One of the worst feelings you can experience is paying attention to the needs and experiences of someone else and have them not do the same for you. It's a feeling nearly everyone has been on both ends of in some way.

There’s an old French movie where this guy asks the woman he’s seeing,

“Pourqoi es-tu triste? Why are you sad?” And she looks at him and responds, 

“Parce que tu me parles avec du palabres. Et je te regarde avec des sentiments. Because you talk to me with words. And I look at you with feelings.”

It’s one of my favorite lines of anything, ever, and really captures the tragedy of this mismatch of attention, which I guess you could also call unrequited love. Anyway, you could imagine Marianne delivering that line to Willoughby. Or Colonel Brandon to Marianne as he had to watch her date Willoughby.

One of the best things you can experience is the reverse, when someone brings up an observation about you that you wouldn’t have thought anyone would notice, or listens really carefully to what you say, or gets the thing you offhandedly mentioned you wanted once as a birthday gift months after you said it. 

Ever since reading Sense and Sensibility, I’ve been more conscious of how I give and receive attention. Hayes’ book has been a good reminder to continue that practice and has renewed my belief in attention as a critically important part of connection.

 I try to maintain all my important relationships by making an active effort to pay genuine attention to others’ needs and lives. I want people I care about to know that I am paying attention to them. I really appreciate when people in my life pay attention to me, even if I don't tell them that, I do notice. I don’t think I’m always the best at it myself, partly because I think I'm kind of self centered at times. But it’s something that I deeply value and will continue to cultivate in myself.