Advent, Attention, and the Shape of Desire

I recently read a thoughtful reflection by Fr. Derek Sakowski on Advent watchfulness at Spiritual Direction titled “Watch!” and kept thinking about how closely its insights resonate with what mimetic theory calls interdividual formation, and with what I’ve been describing as composite models of desire.

One of the most important distinctions in the piece is between vigilance and hypervigilance, between watchful receptivity and fear-based reactivity. That distinction maps remarkably well onto the difference between a stable and an unstable field of desire.

Fear narrows perception. When fear dominates, attention collapses inward, and the relational field becomes defensive. We stop noticing others as persons and begin managing them as threats or liabilities. In mimetic terms, this is what happens when the models shaping us are governed by rivalry, scarcity, and survival rather than gift. Hypervigilance is not neutral awareness; it is a mimetic posture formed by anxious models that teach us the world is dangerous and must be controlled.

What the article describes so well, especially in hyper-protective Christian families and communities, is the formation of distorted identities under fear. Children are not “noticed” so much as managed. They learn which desires are safe, which emotions are dangerous, and which versions of themselves are acceptable. This is not merely psychological damage; it is a deformation of desire itself. The self that emerges is not freely given but strategically constructed.

The Gospel command to watch is not an invitation to isolated mindfulness, nor to communal paranoia. Fr. Sakowski shows that the word is a plural command, a shared attentiveness, that assumes our awareness is always formed with and through others. There is no purely individual watchfulness. We always watch from within a relational ecology, shaped by the models we trust.

This is why Advent watchfulness cannot be reduced to threat-detection or interior self-management. It is about allowing Christ to re-center the entire field of attention, to become the gravitational center around which noticing and care are rightly ordered. Only then can “taking care” avoid becoming control, and “noticing” avoid dissolving into self-absorption.

Fear produces hypervigilance.
Grace restores perception.

“Watch,” then, is not so much a command to stay alert, but rather an invitation to be re-formed together, so that we may notice rightly, desire truthfully, and give ourselves freely.