What does it mean to pay attention?

attention?Yeah.

Well, well, first of all, thank you for the, for the kind words, and I love the idea of picturing the book going down the river in Yosemite.

Well, attention, the word attention actually comes from a Latin word, attendere, which, which translates essentially as stretching towards something.

So to pay attention to something is, you might say, is to, to stretch our attention toward this bird or this flower or whatever it may be, or the whole landscape.

The word extend comes from the same word, so we're extending our psyches outward.

And I think it's, it, it's an incredibly simple practice that, that as I say, and I, you know, my, part of my background is as an evolutionary biologist, so I, I'm not exaggerating when I s- or being metaphorical when I'm saying that I think we evolved to pay attention.

Yeah.