99% of the time I'm totally in love with the privilege and awe of just watching my daughter grow up....then there's the other 1% of the time I feel as though I'm a half-step away from being that strangely numbed Lieutenant who is walking through a battlefield of scorched earth with men screaming, machine guns firing, grenades being launched and mortars exploding all around him... while he has a relaxed conversation, with someone completely distracted by all the chaos, about what they might have for lunch later in the day.
An interesting article I dug up in the Harvard Business Review blog on: Awareness, Focus & Judgement....applicable in any walk of life:
http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2009/01/pay-attention-an-interview-wit.html