Simone Weil on the need to pay attention even when we don’t care
Genuine attention always does us good
Described by Andre Gide as “the most truly spiritual writer of this century,” and by T. S. Eliot as “a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints,” Simone Weil was also a brilliant philosopher and someone who lived out her convictions with unusual intensity and consistency. She wrote the influential books The Need for Roots and Waiting for God. She died in 1943. This is taken from an essay titled “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” collected in Waiting for God.
School children and students who love God should never say: “For my part I like mathematics”; “I like French”; “I like Greek.” They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention. . . .
Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted.
If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without our knowing or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul. . . .
It may very likely be felt in some department of the intelligence in no way connected with mathematics. Perhaps he who made the unsuccessful effort will one day be able to grasp the beauty of a line of Racine more vividly on account of it. But it is certain that this effort will bear its fruit. . . .
Every time that a human being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces no visible fruit. . . .
If there is a real desire, if the thing desired is really light, the desire for light produces it. There is a real desire when there is an effort of attention. It is really light that is desired if all other incentives are absent.
Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul. Every effort adds a little gold to a treasure no power on earth can take away.
Previous: G. K. Chesterton on the often transgressed limits of logic.
I used to preach this to my students all the time. Also, God created this world, and we should be curious about everything in it. And the ones who said they wanted to keep writing -- you should know everything that you can learn; you never know what will play into your work.