The Art Of Knowing What To Overlook

OK, I promise that this is the last tidbit from Eric Weiner’s Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine. But this brief passage struck me as so true that I want to share it with you:

Normally, we think of the religious as people who care more, not less than the rest of us. This is not true, not exactly. The truly religious care more deeply about fewer things and don’t give a hoot about the rest. As William James put it, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

“The art of knowing what to overlook”–that’s a wonderful turn of phrase, isn’t it?  And it’s a good reminder that most things aren’t that important, really, in the grand scheme of things. But a few things are very, very, very important, and that’s where we need to focus our attention.