the quality of our attention
/rōot/ awakenings post # 29 - on media overwhelm, presence, and intentional action
“Any act to change the world around us begins within us."
- Valerie Kaur, See No Stranger
I spent the past four days in silence, sitting with my breath and the constant stream of thoughts that wanted to pull me toward the endless scroll of news waiting on my phone. So, it didn’t feel like a coincidence that when I emerged from my meditation retreat this afternoon, I found Valerie Kaur's See No Stranger on the side table and opened it to this line: “Any act to change the world around us, begins within us.”
For months, I've been watching people I care about toggle between two states: complete overwhelm at the barrage of crisis after crisis, or complete numbness as a way to cope with information that feels too vast to metabolize. The news cycle has become a relentless tide of urgency, each story demanding our immediate attention and emotional labor. Social media amplifies this until every scroll becomes a choice between staying informed and staying sane.
I've felt this tension in my own body—the way my nervous system contracts when I open my phone, anticipating another act of violence captured on camera and streamed out to the world. The heaviness that settles in my chest when I read about another policy that will harm vulnerable communities. The despair that whispers what's the point—will anything I do actually help?
But during the retreat my guru reminded me of something that often gets lost in the anxiety and noise: the quality of attention I bring to the world matters. Not just what I do, but how I show up to do it. When I'm operating from a place of overwhelm or numbness, my actions—even well-intentioned ones—carry that energy. I become part of the reactivity rather than the response.
The retreat wasn't an escape from the realities waiting outside those walls. Instead, it offered a more essential reminder: the practice of staying present with what is, without immediately needing to fix or flee from it. This is what Kaur's words point to—not that we should retreat from the world, but that we can't truly serve it from a place of fragmentation.
The inner work isn't separate from collective action. It's the foundation that makes sustainable engagement possible.
When we can stay present with our own grief about the state of the world, we’re less likely to project that unprocessed pain onto others. When we can notice our own tendency toward overwhelm without being consumed by it, we can offer that same capacity to someone else who's struggling to find their footing.
This isn’t about meditating our way out of systemic oppression. What I’m talking about here is recognizing that the systems causing harm are perpetuated by people operating from wounded places—and that our healing directly impacts our ability to interrupt those cycles.
Every moment we choose presence over reactivity, every breath we take to center ourselves before responding to crisis, every practice that helps us stay connected to our values rather than driven by fear—these aren't selfish acts. They're offerings to the collective care and healing we all desperately need.
a compassionate reframe
We've been taught to see inner work and outer action as competing priorities, as if caring for our own emotional and spiritual wellbeing somehow takes away from our ability to care for others. This false binary keeps us trapped in unsustainable cycles of activism that burn us out, or spiritual practices that disconnect us from the very world we're called to serve.
When our nervous systems are constantly activated by the stream of crisis, we lose access to the very qualities that make our actions most effective—presence, clarity, and wisdom. We start making decisions based on what will reduce our anxiety rather than what will actually serve. We project our unprocessed grief onto others. We mistake urgency for importance and reactivity for engagement.
When we recognize that the quality of our attention matters as much as the quantity of our actions, we can show up differently. We can stay connected to what's happening in the world without taking on the responsibility to fix everything immediately. We can respond to crisis from a place of groundedness rather than overwhelm, which makes our actions more sustainable and our presence more healing for others.
reflection prompts
I invite you to take some time to examine your relationship to inner presence and outer engagement through the following prompts:
What happens in your nervous system when you open your phone expecting to encounter news about suffering or violence, and how does that anticipatory tension affect the way you show up for others?
Where do you notice yourself caught in the choice between staying informed and staying sane, and what would it look like to find a third way that honors both your need for awareness and your capacity for presence?
When you think about the quality of attention you bring to your daily interactions—whether with family, colleagues, or strangers—how might that be different if it came from a centered place rather than an overwhelmed one?
one final thought
The work of staying present with what is—without immediately needing to fix or flee from it—isn’t passive. It's the radical act of refusing to let the world's pain turn us into unconscious reactors. When we do the inner work of staying connected to our own center, we become capable of actions that arise from love rather than fear, wisdom rather than ego. This is how change actually happens: not through frantic doing, but through conscious being that naturally gives rise to intentional action.
In solidarity + gratitude,
Thank you Dimple. This is well-timed, for me. Seesawing between overwhelm (with rebound aggression) and retreat. It’s exhausting.
It was a splendid retreat. Your post reminded me of two things our Guru has said in the past: one, that our spiritual practice is how we can best serve the world, and two, if we see injustice and do not act, then we share in the karma of the injustice. It took me awhile to realize that those are not conflicting statements. We can offer our actions as a spiritual practice just as we can see our meditation as a positive action.