Your life follows your attention. Wherever you look, you end up going.
—Martha Beck
What does this have to do with zombies? Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Attention is tricky. We are all paying attention all the time, always when we are awake and at least sometimes while we are asleep. The question is, “What do we do with this attention?”
There’s a phrase in English: natural-born victim. What makes a natural-born victim? “She never fights back,” we say. It has become politically incorrect to suggest that anyone might ever “invite” abuse. Yet I believe that many victims set out to victimize themselves — not necessarily intending that end result. They invite the zombies into their houses.
When they should have been boarding up the windows, they were watching Bridezillas. When they should have been securing doors and fences, they were playing World of Warcraft. When they should have been laying in ammo, they were going to pick up pepperoni pizza instead.
There’s room for nutty women in lace, new leather duds in cyberworlds, and take-out food, but sometimes all of our attention goes to these diversions, and we follow our attention. In a peacetime world, the cost to focusing on Moo Shu Pork may be trivial. But what’s a peacetime world? When does the peace end? The zombies will not declare war. The zombies will simply come.
The zombies always have the potential to be at the gate. If we want to be ready, we have to put attention on the zombies and the gate. We need to focus on the zombies, both the flesh and bone zombies and the metaphorical zombies that are shuffling toward or have shuffled past our defenses.
