an abundance of attention
by Joyce Wycoff
of Wonder
January 1 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
y time is not what the world wants. It wants my attention, my devoted, passionate attention.
~ Joyce Wycoff
Child
t's all about paying attention.
Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.
~ Susan Sontag
January 2
Substack: Wild Beauty
Spirit of Water
There is a spiritual basis to attention, a humility in waiting upon the emergence of pattern from experience.
~ Mary Catherine Bateson
January 3 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
When we're convinced we have to earn joy, we don't notice the ten thousand places where it is already waiting, asking, waving for our attention.
~ Geneen Roth
Wisdom
January 4
Substack: Wild Beauty
~ Julia Cameron
When we give our full attention, we are in effect saying, “You are worthy of my time.”
~ Mary Montgomery
Wisdom Moon
January 6
Substack: Wild Beauty
Follow your path
January 7 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
If we have nothing material to give, we can offer our attention, our energy, our appreciation.
The world needs us. It doesn’t deplete us to give.
~ Sharon Salzberg
n order to become a doer and a maker, it is necessary that the mind's attention becomes enthralled by something.
~ Dawna Markova
January 8
Substack: Wild Beauty
Under the Hunter’s Moon
Peace
Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention.
If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
January 9 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
Pay attention like your life depends on it. Whatever we pay attention to is amplified. It feels brighter, louder, crisper than everything else.
~ Amishi P. Jha, PhD
Fire and Ice
January 10
Substack: Wild Beauty
This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.
~ Mary Oliver
January 11 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
Soul Notes
Zen pretty much comes down to three things: everything changes, everything is connected, pay attention.
~ Jane Hirshfield
January 12
Substack: Wild Beauty
January 13 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
nergy is the currency of the universe.
When you “pay” attention to something, you buy that experience.
~ Emily Maroutian
Corona Blue
The one thing I know is that if you're not paying attention, it will come back to bite you.
~ Bonnie Raitt
There’s always one
January 14
Substack: Wild Beauty
Cosmic Window
Take the time to notice the little things. It’s where the magic is.
~ Robyn Nola
January 15 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price.
~ Annie Dillard
A river runs through it
January 16
Substack:
Wild Beauty
Final Flight
Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
~ Betty Smith
January 17 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
~ Dorothy Parker
Inching into Wonderland
January 18
Substack: Wild Beauty
Somewhere within you is a huge supply of happiness, always there, patiently waiting for you to reach out and grab it. It's yours for the asking. And you ask by giving it your attention.
In the Garden
January 19 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
~ Elle Sommer
Attention or awareness is the secret of life and the heart of practice
… every moment in life is absolute itself.
That's all there is. There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future; there is nothing but this. So when we don't pay attention to each little this, we miss the whole thing.
~ Charlotte Joko Beck
Bottle Memories
January 20
Substack: Wild Beauty
Summer Thistle
January 21
© Joyce Wycoff, 2025
There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks.
Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.
~ Linda Hogan
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
~ Rachel Carson
Reno Gathering
January 22
Substack: Wild Beauty
We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention.
It’s about time January 23
Joyce Wycoff, 2025
~ Diane Ackerman
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.
When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.
~ Brenda Ueland
January 24
Cactus Flower
Substack: Wild Beauty
Regardless of how we get there, either through meditation or more directly by paying attention to novelty and questioning assumptions, to be mindful is to be in the present, noticing all the wonders that we didn’t realize were right in front of us.
~ Ellen J. Langer
January 25 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
Winter Bunny
Paying rapt attention whether to a trout stream or a novel, a do-it-yourself project or a prayer, increases your capacity for concentration, expands your inner boundaries and lifts your spirits, but more important simply makes you feel that life is worth living.
~ Winifred Gallagher
January 26
Kaleidoscope of Butter ies
Substack: Wild Beauty
January 27 © Joyce Wycoff, 2025
To write requires. an ego, a belief that what you say matters.
Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Your emotions are a guidance system for you.
Pay attention to the way that you are feeling because underneath every emotion is a very powerful personal truth.
~ Teal Swan
Tree of Life
January 28
Substack: Wild Beauty
Coming Together
When convinced that no one – especially those in places of power and privilege – is really paying attention to our protests and demands, we will be less inclined to listen to others, particularly to people whose views differ from ours.
~ Elif Shabak
January 29
© Joyce Wycoff, 2025
God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.
~ Alice Walker
Compassion think it pisses
January 30
Substack: Wild Beauty
Sunset Egret
ppreciative
attention is a shortcut to awe.
~ Sam Horn
January 31
© Joyce Wycoff, 2025
