Every Thursday morning, I meet up with my best friend, and we walk her little dog. Sometimes we go up onto the abandoned airfield, where the wind whips straight through to your bones and on a clear day you can see Peterborough Cathedral, twenty miles away. Sometimes, if the weather is bad, we will go to the playing field and throw a ball for the dog to chase. She is a Jack Russell, so has lots of energy. On fine days we go down to the church and the fen beyond and walk in the flat fields of wheat and barley. The winter wheat is just coming up now, veiling the black soil with a misty green, and the sky is a bowl of blue reaching down to touch the land in all directions. It’s a beautiful land for those who can see it.

It is always my friend who notices the deer and the hares and the hawks. I am too busy concentrating on my feet – I have slipped over more than once when the path has been muddy – and on our conversation. I am not alert. The Alert card says, “Quick to notice and react.” My friend is much better at that than I.

I pay close attention to other things. On a recent visit, I knew immediately there had been a death in the family. To be honest, I did know that this person was very ill, but the moment the door was opened by my friend, I knew that the person had died. It was all in the way my friend held herself and the look of strain on her face. There was grief written all over her.

I am one of those people who “feel” the energy force in others. I don’t mean I can see auras, but I certainly know if someone is not quite right. I am the person who – hopefully tactfully – finds a way to ask, and then, if appropriate, puts an arm around that person, or just places a comforting hand on their shoulder. My boss was worried recently about a pain in his chest. He is a smoker and works under severe stress. He felt able to tell me and I felt able to gently pat his arm. I don’t know if it helped, but I felt honoured that he’d told me. Fortunately, the pain turned out to be a torn muscle and not anything more serious.

The two cards, Attentive and Alert, should surely go together. After all, if one is attentive, one should notice things. I suppose it depends on what you’re paying attention to. There was an experiment where people were asked to count how many times one team touched the ball in a basketball match. Afterwards, none of them could remember the chap in the gorilla costume who had run across the court!

What do you pay attention to? Are you alert to other things, or is your focus strictly on one thing? And is intense focus a good thing or bad?

Mary

A Moodscope member