Noticing

How much of our life do we spend drifting through life versus actually noticing that which surrounds us?

How much of our life do we spend drifting through life versus actually noticing that which surrounds us? How much of our attention is directed towards what we want to focus on versus reacting to what others want us to focus on?

I recently listened to a podcast with Rob Walker, journalist and author of The Art of Noticing, in which he talks about a new type of economy — the attention economy.

We live in a world today in which everything around us is constantly vying for our attention. Every time you get a text, your phone buzzes in your pocket, redirecting your attention from whatever you’re focusing on to something meaningless. Rather than acting, we spend most of our time reacting. We’re losing the ability to focus on what we want to focus on by living merely reacting to what others want us to focus on.

We walk past miracles every single day that we take for granted; we don’t even notice them, let alone acknowledge them. We give ourselves so much into the unimportant that we miss out on the beauty and spontaneity of every moment. All the inspiration we could ever need is around us at any given moment, there for the taking — if we allow ourselves to see it.

Funnily enough, Rob Walker, while telling me all this (in the podcast), made me realize that the very act of my listening to the podcast put me in the wrong. Rather than looking into myself or the miracles that surround me, I went looking to a podcast for inspiration. I found myself turning to reaction for creativity.

I was due to post the 12th issue of Lincoln’s Hat on Thursday, March 27th, keeping with the schedule I had been maintaining for my posts. The only problem was that I was on spring break vacation in Colombia. The previous couple of weeks had been so incredibly active that I never gave myself the opportunity to actually notice anything that was happening around me. Thursday rolled around and I found myself completely uninspired to write anything, so I decided Lincoln’s Hat was due for a vacation as well. While seeing everything, I realized I hadn’t truly looked at anything. I wouldn’t change a single thing about my trip, but I do emerge with a new point of view, and a new commitment to myself.

Has it ever happened to you that you meet someone for the first time, and suddenly you start seeing them everywhere? Odds are, you were already seeing them everywhere, you had just never noticed them. Once you do, you won’t stop; they’re everywhere.

Listening to “Hurt” by Johnny Cash, you hear a beautiful song performed by one of the greatest artists of his generation. You watch the music video, and the song is put into an entirely different context. It’s almost like you’re hearing it with different ears. You don’t hear Johnny Cash, but a man nearing death looking back at all that has been. Once you watch the video, the song never sounds the same.

An additional piece of context can change your entire perception of anything — a person, a song, a building, or a movie. Walker describes a concept he calls the “spotlight image”. Once a new idea or piece of context comes into your mind, everything you see can be seen through the lens of that context or idea.

If you decide to focus on flowers when you’re out on a run, you’ll see an incredible variety of flowers you’ve never seen before everywhere, even where you’ve been a million times. In interior design, if you start focusing on certain features, like lighting, every time you enter a room, you’ll immediately turn to that. Once you’ve been in many rooms, you’ll start noticing differences. Is there overhead lighting? Are there lamps? What color is the light? How does it serve the purpose of the room? How does it make you feel? How does it complement the other elements of the room?

The same thing applies to people. You first begin by noticing what they do. Do that enough, and you’ll learn how they do it, and most importantly, why. People’s motivations stretch far beyond what we see on the surface, what we think is going on in their heads, and in their lives. Drivers think cyclists are annoying and entitled; cyclists think drivers are inconsiderate with no regard for their safety. Before you judge the cyclist, ride his bike.

If we can learn to notice people within that extra context, we can cut the distance between one another. We can pull ourselves out of our perfect fantasy land and into reality. But that must be a conscious choice we make every day. It’s not about just trying to focus on random things surrounding you — it’s about deliberately going out of your way to find specific things out in the world.

How many times have we criticized someone we haven’t met, only to meet them later and hit it off? Or thought a restaurant was bad because of how it looks without ever having eaten there, only to eat there and find yourself enjoying it?

Judgment requires curiosity. We mustn’t make decisions merely from others’ opinions, but by deliberately forcing ourselves into unfamiliar situations. We have no idea if they’ll be enjoyable, but at least in the end we’ll learn, and we’ll be able to speak for ourselves on the matter. Become aware of what you see and what you judge. There might be a whole lot more to it than you think. Do not give in to distraction; learn about your world as it is. Notice.

P.S. I heard birds on campus for the first time in a while when walking back (with no phone or music) from class. It was beautiful.

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Thank you so much for reading! If there are any topics you think would be interesting to find in future issues of Lincoln’s Hat, please leave a comment with your suggestions.