One of my favorite living humans I’ve never met, Jane Goodall, turned 90 this month. She is, perhaps, the matron saint of paying attention.
She is most famous for her work among the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Initially an outsider to the scientific community, without a college degree, she did things one wasn’t supposed to do in her observations of chimpanzee life. She affectionately named her subjects. She attributed human-like emotions to them. She bonded with them. In other words, she paid attention not as a detached observer but as a curious and...