# The Leftovers Of Your Attention

> A resurfaced photo of people who can never gather again forces one honest question about who gets your full attention.
- Title: The Leftovers Of Your Attention · Dallas Express | Shortify
- Summary: A resurfaced photo of people who can never gather again forces one honest question about who gets your full attention. You cannot ask for more time with the…
- Keywords: presence, family, faith, attention, memory, news, politics, Leftovers, Dallas Express
- Source: Dallas Express — https://dallasexpress.com/lifestyle/are-the-people-you-love-getting-the-leftovers-of-your-attention
- Author: Dallas Express
- Published: 2026-09-13T13:00:05+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: presence, family, faith, attention, memory, news, politics
## Time slips both ways
We treat time like a placeholder for appointments and deadlines, bargaining with the clock to stretch an hour or take back a second that changed everything.

> We attempt to frame hours to fit our schedules, testing whether we can bend a minute into two
## Only now is livable
The past is timestamped and the future is guesswork. This moment is the only one actually within reach, and the clock keeps moving after we stop.

> only this moment can be lived
## Cheating today
Most of us split the present between nostalgia and dread, replaying yesterday while borrowing anxiety from a tomorrow that hasn't happened.

> many cheat today by having an affair with yesterday and stealing trouble from tomorrow
## A photo from 13 years ago
Facebook resurfaced a picture from the deer lease. Within a few years, getting that same group of family and friends together became impossible.
## The memory came back alive
Staring at it, she could hear the laughter and feel the heat of the coffee cup, and the cactus spine. Fondness and sadness both stayed for hours.
## Eyes on them, mind elsewhere
The photo exposed an arrogance: assuming loved ones will always be there while listening to them the way you listen to background noise.

> How many times have I heard my loved ones move about me like noise rather than the most important people in my life?
## Worry takes from someone else
Matthew 6:34 says not to worry about tomorrow. She read it as relief from her own anxiety, rarely as a question about what that anxiety costs the person in front of her.

> Someone I prayed for, now standing in front of me, waiting for me to put down whatever seems so important.
## Just look up
Visiting a memory is fine. But some people are still laughing in the same room, no photograph required. The work is seeing them today.

> Lord, help me to be fully present.
## Key takeaway

You cannot ask for more time with the people you love while handing them the scraps of your attention.