what do i mean by “noticing”?

Noticing is a particular way of paying attention. It’s holding present experience up to the light with an expansive heart that can receive the shimmer or the shadow of it with love. It’s a bare witnessing that is free of expectation or judgment. Noticing is strengthened from practice and sharpened from a stance of self love and humility. 

I had forgotten to notice for too long. The effect was dissatisfaction and disconnection because my attention was set to capture what wasn’t working instead of all that was. 

HOW DO YOU BEGIN TO NOTICE? I live what I teach.  Small, subtle changes that shift the view.

“You only point out the things I do wrong,” my husband of 25 years groaned.  “Never the many things I do right.”  He went on, “You teach insight meditation,” his voice rising as he reminded me of one key principle I had repeated endlessly to my children, “what you choose to pay attention to is what your life is.”  “So,” he asked indignantly, “Why do you focus primarily on my flaws?” he asked.

William James, the father of psychology, said it first. “My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items that I notice shape my mind.” In other words, we have enormous power over our own happiness.

Mid-life and confident, I was thrown off center and off my high horse.  Maybe it was me?  Did I need to do the changing and not him? Had I wasted so much time with my attention on the wrong things?  Could I create a happier marriage just by thinking differently about it?

I noticed when he opened the Amazon package and left the scissors, the box and the mess on the table, but I failed to focus on its contents, the fancy flower shears he had dutifully researched and ordered for me when I had casually mentioned I wanted a pair. 

I was annoyed when he was on the phone when we were late to meet some friends, but forgot to mention that he was talking to his parents, 88 and 92 years old, to check in and see how they were faring in the heat.  And these friends were always, always late.  

The Manuka honey poultice that he made for my burn made everything in our bed sticky, for days.  But the horrible pain and scarring was severely reduced because of his tender efforts at alternative healing.


With “conscious endeavor,” as Thoreau exalts us in Walden, I began to create the “noticing wall.”  It started with one note, a message written on the back of a business card from a job I had 15 years ago. I still had about 500 of those cards left.   “Stirred the thick peanut butter,” it read, written neatly in purple Sharpie.  I taped it up on the bathroom wall, right next to his sink. He would see that I did notice.  I did appreciate.

The second one, “Made me a delicious dinner and cleaned inside the sink,” went up next to the first.  “ Walked the puppy, even though it was freezing cold,” read the third.  “Fixed the dishwasher with full butt crack” declared the fourth.  I did see.

The notes started spreading across the bathroom wall, like wallpaper.  All the many things he did that made the moments, and therefore our lives, much better.  I was accumulating his meaningful small victories, not the everyday failures.  Small things, like “turning up the heat when my mother came to visit,” and bigger things, like “planning a fabulous family trip to Chile.”  Sometimes once a week; rarely, three a day.  

My heart was growing more tender, more connected to what was good in him. A softening.  


At some point as the wall was filling up, the kids joined in.   Despite his lofty academic and work credentials, he’s a terrible speller.  Embarrassing.  One daughter wrote, “Dad - I loved the note you left on my bike for me - ‘honey - I’ve tide the flashlight to your bike so you won’t have to ride to work in the dark,’ but you spell “tied” like this!” My other daughter, when she was finished laughing, “... tries to understand what a ‘bandeau’ is.” A big effort from a man with three brothers who has two daughters.  They were noticing, too.  


Some of the notes were poetic.  “How my father kisses the dog so gently.”  Others, just two words, “meatless meatsauce” and “researched tires.”  Many were related to great meals he made, coffee in bed, and fixing things; each said something different. All were true.


The notes, it turned out, were not just for his benefit.   At each posting, I was also reminded of the many things he did so well, so right, so generously.  Acts of kindness I would not have noticed, or forgotten.  Even with his screw-ups and missteps,  I remembered the effort, the eventual laughter, forgiveness.  

Focusing on the good makes you feel like you have what you need.  That’s the thing about practicing any form of gratitude  - it deepens your capacity to be grateful.  When I pay attention to all that I have, my spirit gets lifted and a feeling of abundance is generated.  The wall reminds me of all that he has done, and does, and it turns my heart toward that.  Where he falls short, I remember, this is what makes him human, and capable of relationship and growing.  I feel compassion, not frustration.

“Said ‘thank you’ when I emptied the dishwasher.”  I had done it a thousand times before over the years, but now he noticed that it, too, is something that keeps our lives moving forward. All the emptying and filling was not in vain.  “Bought Tampax for the girls, despite the endless choices available at Walgreens.”


When you get close in and read each individual card, you capture a singular event.  A moment to savor.  But in a short time, the whole bathroom wall became this giant record of greatness, of giving.  It wasn’t just a random sampling of little things, but a patchwork quilt thread together with love. 

Wherever I looked, I saw love.