I think about the book The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker a lot since reading it last year. The subtitle says it all: “131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday.” I loved the idea that how you notice and what you do with what you’ve noticed can all be an art form. And that is pretty much what the entire list is about: what people have decided to notice and how. I took some notes and had a few ideas for how I could replicate some in my own life, but none have come to much fruition. Still, I can’t get the book out of my head, because my biggest takeaway was just to take time to notice, well, anything!
For a while, I tried to notice anything odd, and even better, snap a picture of it. I chose “odd” rather than “beautiful” because oddities tell stories and make you curious. The first example that comes to mind is when I saw a motorcycle parked on the sidewalk outside the local library. Immediately questions came to mine and a story formed: Who parked it there? Were they in a hurry for a certain book? What book can make someone that hurried? Is there treasure I should know about? Scavenger hunt? Or maybe it was someone important? I have no idea, but to this day, I wonder!
On another day, I saw a orange traffic cone perched at the top of a tree. How did it get there? Did someone put it there? Was it an industrious squirrel? Or a giant?
These are fun examples, and I hope I can keep up this practice. But it’s actually not the point of this post. The point is that efforts to be present in my every day life, to “eliminate hurry”*, to practice noticing, are worth pursuing.
As a Christian, I actually think I have the same calling: to lift up my head and see life for what it really is. And if I use my lenses of “beauty, freedom, and abundance”, the results can be profound. I really love the idea that not only can noticing be an art form, it can also be a spiritual discipline. (I would argue that creating any art is actually a spiritual practice, which I’ve always known in my soul but have learned more practically from these art classes.)
So I will continue to notice oddities (there may be an occasional blog post), but also every season I want to pursue noticing different things that I set up beforehand, engaging many or all of my senses. For example, this fall, I want to notice anytime:
I see the colors of the trees.
I hear the sound of the leaves on the ground.
I smell and taste fall spices.
I feel soft blankets.
All these things come so naturally in autumn, and maybe that’s why I love this season. Maybe I’ve spent my whole life really noticing fall, and therefore finding the most joy this time of year. That’s good. That’s the whole point.
And it’s also good to start with an easy one!
Will you join me in taking notice, in the hopes that it will keep us really living in the present? What goals would you set for yourself to notice this season?
*This quote is from a chapter I read from the book The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg.
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