May I Have Your Attention, Please?

I recently spent ten days at a Vipassana meditation course, where, for twelve hours a day, my sole job was to turn my attention inward. No phone. No talking. No distractions. Just me, my body, my thoughts, and my awareness. Vipassana—sometimes called “Insight Meditation”—is an ancient technique that teaches you to notice what’s happening within you, without reacting with craving or aversion. The practice is deceptively simple: sit still and observe your breath, your sensations, and your mind. Repeat. For 10 days.

The Value of Attention

Somewhere in the middle of the silence, I realized something crystal clear: attention is our most valuable commodity. And I don’t just mean in a meditative sense. I mean in the most literal, modern, economic sense—our entire economy is engineered to capture and monetize your attention.

And here’s the kicker: I’m in that business, too.

Capturing Attention in Business

My role at All Ways Adventure is to entice you to book a trip with us. I spend my days thinking about you—who you are, where you are, what you’re doing, and how to get you to stop scrolling and click “Book Now.” I’ve read research from companies with budgets bigger than the GDP of small countries about how to capture our target market’s attention. I’ve counted the number of times you click before reserving a trip with us and I’m working to make that number smaller. I’m adding more videos to our website and social media. Building a better FAQ page. Hiring a team to tweak copy to get us to page one of the Google search results.



I wonder—are you reading this on your phone at work? On your couch with a laptop? Would you prefer a phone call or would that annoy you? What time zone are you on? Are you sleeping or having dinner with your family? Do you want an All Ways Adventure business card at the end of your trip? A follow-up email? Do you want to read about how we employ Leave No Trace principles on our trips, or do we have to prove it to you by buying brand new electric vehicles? What would make you say, “Yes, here’s my credit card” before bouncing to a shinier company’s site? 

Attention as a Gift

But here’s my confession: all of this effort isn’t so you’ll just book a trip. It’s so we can give you something infinitely more valuable—your attention back. To give you the chance to calm your mind, to take your first rappel and feel your fear turn into exhilaration, to look around at a canyon older than we can conceive of and realize you are part of something vast.

It feels urgent to me that the future depends on giving each person a chance to learn, in Mary Oliver’s words:

…how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?...

Noticing the Commodification of Attention

The first step to paying attention is noticing. Noticing when you’re being commodified. I once heard—and I believe it to be true—that there are no free apps. If you didn’t pay for the app, then you are the product. Your attention is what’s being sold to advertisers desperate to wedge their product into your awareness.



We are dynamic, complex, one-of-a-kind beings, yet we allow ourselves to be boiled down to Netflix watchers and McDonald’s customers. It takes conscious, deliberate effort to break free from the traps that mega-corporations have set for us.

And here’s the truth: being told to pay attention isn’t enough. You have to experience it yourself. That’s what we offer at All Ways Adventure. Not shiny gimmicks, not clickbait—just real moments in wild places, where your attention becomes yours again.

So yes, I’m working behind the scenes to get you here. But when you arrive, my hope is that you’ll forget all about me, all about your phone, all about everything except the sound of wind on the sand dunes and the way the light moves across the canyon walls.

I hope you’ll enjoy one my favorite poems by Mary Oliver:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?



Mary Oliver