On the Noticing Game

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2020/04/noticing.html#links

When the kids were a bit younger, we used to ride bikes in local forest preserves. One thing I did to distract them from complaining of tired legs is to play the noticing game. The point would be to point out specific things you noticed — ripe blackberries, a tree shaped like a monster, a dead mouse on the path – and remember them.

To remember them we did the peg method of memorization. This method also works on walks or car rides. It turns travel into exploration. Keri Smith describes a lot of these types of things in her book “How To Be an Explorer of the World.”

I still use this method. Just last week I did it on a bike ride with my teenage daughter and came up with twenty noticed. I like exercising my memory – which is terrible and needs exercise. But I also like to notice and name things in order to get out of my normal state of mind which is planning or rehearsing future conversations or recalling old conversations. So the noticing is actual an exercise of being more present and bearing witness to how things are changing in nature. 

Tal Ben-Shahar tells this story about Helen Keller going off on a friend who had observed "nothing in particular" in a forest walk.

Helen Keller tells a story about a friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods. When Keller asked her friend what she had observed, the friend replied, “Nothing in particular.” Keller writes: I wondered how it was possible to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing of note. I who cannot see find hundreds of things: the delicate symmetry of a leaf, the smooth skin of a silver birch, the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: use your eyes as if tomorrow you will have been stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the songs of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never taste or smell again. 

The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life by Tal Ben-Shahar

Sarah Susanka writes about a a similar exercise in her book The Not So Big House. she shares a mindfulness e exercise that asks you to bring yourself back to what’s happening right now. The idea is that you’re supposed to check in regularly through the day and become aware of what’s happening (that is what you’re noticing) right now. The sound of the furnace fan, the shape of a shadow cast on the floor from your slider plant, the breeze on your arm.

I just discovered Grant Snider’s blog Incidental Comics though I know him from his work in the New York Times book reviews. His cartoon above records his own noticing on a run. I love other comics like this (often in 9 panes) that explore different kinds of clouds or things he found after a rain storm. All the things are based on observation. (I also love his cartoons that are all titled “delights” which combine gratefulness practice with noticing). 

Here's one called "Summer Feeling":