How many times do we look…without seeing? Or listen…without hearing? No surprise here. With as busy and scattered as we can get, it is very easy to cast a gaze in a particular direction and come away with little or no memory of what we were looking at. In a word, we are not noticing any more. We are flying through our lives, agendas chock full, often with little or no time to ratchet down the course in front of us. Sometimes I think that the day before us just translates as “stuff to do,” not as spaces where ideas, impressions and images can shake out before us.
Everything is present...
Our home has a large bay window with San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County spread before us every minute of the day. I cannot begin to think of how many times we have stood before that view, sometimes for good lengths of time, and watched it change before our eyes. And these changes are never like the ones we saw the day before. We know this because we are noticing. Everything is present…clouds, sun, rain, small boats, bare waters. We have grown so used to looking every day that we are truly seeing as well.
A human skill...
Noticing is a human skill that can get away from us if we are not careful, but we can always get it back. And we do have reasons for noticing. Writers are always paying attention…to ideas that come up, to people who are presenting before them, to the scope of their own thoughts. But all kinds of thinkers are noticers as well. Anyone who actually spends real time with himself inside his own day is a noticer.
A calmer place in us...
It could well be that we will need to return again to a calmer place in us that thinks about one thing at a time. Multi-media distractions are not all they’re cracked up to be. With so much information and sound passing before us, there is no one thing that is precious on its own. Our tech progress will not stop advancing, of course, so we will have to be the ones who sort out the ideas and images we want to notice.
To notice once more...
When we were little kids we noticed everything, including the bugs in our yards. And maybe some of this came about because we were a lot closer to the ground in those days, but then…wouldn’t it be grand, really grand, to again be able to look…and also see? To listen…and also hear? To notice once more.
A human skill...
Noticing is a human skill that can get away from us if we are not careful, but we can always get it back. And we do have reasons for noticing. Writers are always paying attention…to ideas that come up, to people who are presenting before them, to the scope of their own thoughts. But all kinds of thinkers are noticers as well. Anyone who actually spends real time with himself inside his own day is a noticer.
A calmer place in us...
It could well be that we will need to return again to a calmer place in us that thinks about one thing at a time. Multi-media distractions are not all they’re cracked up to be. With so much information and sound passing before us, there is no one thing that is precious on its own. Our tech progress will not stop advancing, of course, so we will have to be the ones who sort out the ideas and images we want to notice.
To notice once more...
When we were little kids we noticed everything, including the bugs in our yards. And maybe some of this came about because we were a lot closer to the ground in those days, but then…wouldn’t it be grand, really grand, to again be able to look…and also see? To listen…and also hear? To notice once more.
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