Barbara Ardinger
In the great modern tragedy Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman, a traveling salesman, is engaging in some very strange behaviors. His wife, Linda, seems to be the only one who notices—or cares. “Attention must be paid,” she says in act 1. He’s “a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.” (Just so you know, classical tragedy—the Greeks, Shakespeare, grand opera—deals with the deaths of kings. Miller’s genius was to bring the classical dimensions of tragedy into the lives of ordinary people like Willy Loman—and you and me.)
What is the lesson of Miller’s play for us Pagans? Who do we know in our “real lives” who needs to be noticed? To whom does attention need to be paid? What kind of attention?
Let’s start by considering the psychological truth that we can’t pay adequate attention to other people if we’re not paying attention to ourselves. Attending to ourselves is not selfish behavior. We can’t help others when we’re not helping ourselves. Self-care means setting a good example for others as well as enabling ourselves to attend to others. So take a close look at yourself. To what part of your life must attention be paid? What needs to be attended to?
First, pay attention to your physical health. Make an appointment with your physician, chiropractor, optometrist, or holistic health practitioner. If they give you advice, follow it. If you don’t get enough exercise, for example, start taking a daily walk or sign up for a yoga class. You certainly don’t want to fall into your grave like an old dog.
Second, attend to your emotional and psychological health. If you need help, ask for it. My father always told me that if something isn’t worth asking for, it’s not worth having. This is good advice. Let’s all follow it and ask for help when we need it.
Third, attention must also be paid to your spiritual well-being. Don’t just be a lazy Pagan. Don’t ignore the messages Pagans receive from unusual sources. Don’t be the passive follower of some cultish leader. Examine what you say you believe and engage in honest conversations with leaders of your tradition and other priests or priestesses and scholars you respect. If you’re a solitary, attend public rituals. Brush up your solitary rituals, too, to make them meaningful again. Don’t just drift through the Wheel of the Year. Pay attention to our eight holy days—and the days in between. What meaning do you find in each day? Pay attention to the moon as she moves through her phases.
When I started writing this article, I sent an email to a dozen of my friends and warned them that I would probably use their replies. I am happy to say that I have some very wise friends. Here is what one of them said about how we Pagans should pay attention to what it means to be a Pagan:
We can’t just be Pagans on autopilot. We have to pay attention to our magical “muscles” and exercise them regularly. It’s easy to go to the occasional ritual and call yourself Pagan. It’s harder to remember that “magic is the art of changing consciousness at will” and to make magical changes.
Another friend agrees with me that it’s important to pay attention to the details and the moments of our lives. We should listen to our senses. That’s how we find out what is important:
I think it’s important to pay attention to the moment. In life, we see the forest, but very rarely do we look at the trees. We do not take in the details, and we tend to take the everyday things for granted. We need to pay attention and listen to our senses. On days when I really pay attention to the details, I feel the texture of fabrics and how they feel against my skin. I take time to taste my food more deeply and notice the temperature and how it makes me feel. I listen to music and let it touch my soul. I remind myself to be thankful for each and every thing and never to take anything or anyone for granted.
Consider what my friends are saying. Let’s not walk around on autopilot. Let’s pay attention to what may be hiding inside what looks ordinary. Let’s pay attention to the details of each moment. This kind of attention can, at a minimum, make daily life more interesting. We Pagans may look like ordinary people, but we know that the extraordinary lives in us, too. We also know, of course, that we won’t attain perfection, but when we understand how attention must be paid to ourselves, we’ll also understand how attention must be paid to other people.
Let’s not walk around on autopilot. Let’s pay attention to what may be hiding inside what looks ordinary. Let’s pay attention to the details of each moment.
Look around you. Do you pay enough attention to other people? Life in the twenty-first century is so busy that, even though we can stay connected to our friends via our electronic devices, we may not be connected at all on the soul level like we can be when we’re sitting in a real, live circle or even having lunch together. Do you sit down for meals with your husband/wife/partner and your children? Do you have real, spoken conversations with them instead of just gathering around the TV and watching football and reality shows?
In Death of a Salesman, Willy’s sons invite him out for dinner, but then they meet up with a couple girls and abandon him. The son of his longtime employer fires him. He’s abandoned by everyone in the play except Linda, and she’s helpless to save him—which is why the play is a tragedy.
Attention must be paid to our family and friends. Take another good, steady look at, say, your coven or circle. Do you see the beginnings of situations that could become troublesome? What could you do to forestall these troubles? Who could you ask for help? What are your resources?
Is someone sending out tiny messages that are signals for help? The husband of one of my friends has been ill, and he also retired this year. Sometimes his conversations are hard to understand. But like Linda in the play, my friend is paying attention. Among other things, she’s scheduling at least two outings a week. They go to museums and the theater, they go kayaking, they go out to dinner, and they go to meetings together. When this same friend received a scary diagnosis last year, she turned to me. I did some checking among my Pagan and metaphysical friends and received referrals to holistic healers and Reiki practitioners. My friend was happy with her physician, so I didn’t challenge that. Instead, I took her to meet a Reiki master, from whom she received both healing and learning. She’s paying attention to herself and to her husband. I think she’s a good example of a real-life Linda Loman.
Yes, attention must be paid to our family and friends, including the animals that live with us. (Please note that we don’t “own” pets. When you “own” someone, you’ve enslaved them. We live with our furry, feathered, or finny family members.) What action could you take to help with any distress, major or minor? I used to live with two rescued Maine coon cats named Heisenberg and Schroedinger. When Schroedinger’s kidneys failed and I had to have her euthanized, Heisenberg became very greedy for my time. When I adopted a new cat, he was jealous at first and started acting out. It took a few weeks—plus a few drops of kitty Rescue Remedy (no alcohol) in their water bowl—of careful attention on my part to help them become friends.
To what else must attention be paid? Pretend I sent you a note and write your own response to this question. Let your circle sisters and brothers and covenmates read it. Start a real, live conversation. Maybe create a new ritual about paying attention.
Here is another response from one of my friends. Do you resonate with anything mentioned here?
We need to pay attention to how we treat those in our lives…. It’s the small things—the way you greet and depart from someone, the way you handle snarls in traffic, the way you treat yourself. The energy we put into the big causes is usually positive and focused. We need to have the same focus when taking care of ourselves and those in our lives.
Many of us like to complain about people’s dependence on their electronic devices. Who hasn’t almost been run over by someone walking down the sidewalk and staring at their cell phone? How often have you seen people texting or tweeting or reading Facebook posts while they’re supposed to be paying attention to traffic? Many people obviously believe that electronic attention equals personal attention, and they ignore the ways social media distracts us from paying personal attention to each other. One of my friends addressed this issue:
[My husband] and I insist on an evening meal every night where we all put our phones down, but even the simple act of being able to watch a movie cannot occur without also watching or interacting with whatever is happening on our phones. My stepson will watch three and four television shows simultaneously, remote control in hand, while also watching something else on his phone.
We Pagans always say we worship the ground we walk on. We like to say we pay attention to Mother Earth. We camp out and do outdoor rituals and commune with Mother Nature. But:
The fastest-growing spiritual group in the United States is the unaffiliated, spiritual not religious. Most of them cite nature as being entwined with their spirituality, yet they’re not flocking to the Pagan movement. Why? Because they see themselves as modern and grounded in science. The Pagan elevation of the “old ways” doesn’t appeal to them. The things most Pagans love about their faith—the gear, the dress, the rituals, the symbology—are what they like the least.
And this:
I think we should be more aware of our relationship with Mother Earth and how interconnected we are. Humanity has become so out of balance, and it just seems to be getting worse. I think Pagans have a responsibility to promote awareness of this connection in our communities, either through ritual, activism, or just in our daily lives.
We Pagans need to pay attention to our communities, which may include those who came before us: our foremothers and other ancestors, our teachers and elders, and those ordinary, unknown people who carried our traditions into the present. We might want to create rituals to honor those people.
Willy Loman receives no honor at all until after he has sped into traffic and killed myself, and then even his funeral is inadequate. You and I can remember what Linda said—“Attention must be paid”—and honor ourselves, our communities, and our families, friends, and pets. What will you do to pay better attention?
Barbara Ardinger, PhD (www.barbaraardinger.com, www.facebook.com/barbara.ardinger) is the author of Secret Lives, a novel about a circle of crones, mothers, and maidens, plus goddesses, a talking cat, and the Green Man. Her earlier books include Pagan Every Day (a daybook), Goddess Meditations (the first-ever book of meditations focusing on goddesses), Finding New Goddesses (a parody of goddess encyclopedias), and Quicksilver Moon (a realistic novel… except for the vampire). She is also well known for the rituals she creates. Her day job is freelance editing for people who have good ideas but don’t want to embarrass themselves in print. Barbara lives in Southern California with her two rescued cats, Heisenberg (a Maine coon) and Schroedinger (a Turkish Van).
Illustrator: Jennifer Hewitson