The Moment You Notice, Secrets of the Now

There is a strange little moment that happens to us all the time.

We notice something.

Someone’s voice changes.

A friend becomes unusually quiet.

A child stops playing.

Someone smiles, but the smile doesn’t quite reach their eyes.

We notice the hesitation before someone answers a question. The tension in a room. The person standing just a little too far away from everyone else.

Most of these moments seem insignificant.

We notice them, and then we move on.

But sometimes we don’t.

Sometimes something catches our attention and refuses to let go.

And I have begun to wonder if that tiny moment—the moment we notice—may be far more important than we realize.

Because seeing and noticing are not quite the same thing.

We see an enormous amount every day. Our senses are constantly gathering information, much of which never reaches our conscious attention.

Noticing is different.

Noticing is when something crosses the invisible threshold between what is happening and what we become aware is happening.

And once we notice, something else becomes possible.

We can choose what to do with what we have seen.

What happens next?

Imagine that you notice someone is vulnerable.

Perhaps they’re frightened.

Perhaps they’re lonely.

Perhaps they’re desperate for approval.

Perhaps they’re simply having a terrible day.

The vulnerability itself is neither good nor bad. It is simply something you have perceived.

But what happens next can tell us something about the consciousness doing the perceiving.

One person might think:

How can I help?

Another might think:

How can I avoid making this worse?

Another might not know what to do at all—but recognize that something is wrong and remain present.

And another person might see the same vulnerability and immediately begin calculating how it could be used.

The perception is the same.

The orientation is not.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a great deal lately.

We often assume that a person who understands other people well must therefore possess a highly developed consciousness.

But that isn’t necessarily true.

A predator has to be observant.

A predator has to recognize weakness.

A predator has to understand behavior well enough to anticipate what another creature will do.

In fact, some of the most destructive people can be extraordinarily perceptive.

They notice everything.

They simply use what they notice differently.

And perhaps that is one of the great misunderstandings about consciousness.

Awareness by itself does not make us wise.

We can become extremely good at seeing without becoming any better at understanding.

We can become extraordinarily skilled at reading other people without ever becoming interested in what our knowledge does to them.

We can learn someone’s fears, desires, insecurities and dreams—and use that knowledge either to protect them or to control them.

The difference isn’t necessarily in the information.

It is in the direction that information takes us.

The little space between noticing and doing

There is, however, something remarkable that can happen between perception and action.

A pause.

It might last only a second.

We notice our irritation before we speak.

We notice that someone is afraid before we push harder.

We notice our own desire to win an argument.

We notice the impulse to retaliate.

We notice that we are enjoying someone else’s humiliation.

We notice.

And suddenly we have a choice that we didn’t have a moment before.

We can still make the wrong choice.

We can still be angry. We can still be selfish. We can still misunderstand.

Being conscious does not make us perfect.

But noticing gives us the opportunity to interrupt the automatic response.

Perhaps that is where consciousness becomes something more than perception.

Perhaps consciousness is not simply the ability to see what is happening.

Perhaps it is the ability to see what is happening and remain conscious of what we do next.

And sometimes the thing we notice is ourselves

This may be the hardest kind of noticing.

It is relatively easy to recognize someone else’s cruelty.

It is much harder to recognize our own.

We notice the manipulation in someone else, but not the manipulation in ourselves.

We notice another person’s need for control, but overlook our own.

We recognize someone else’s arrogance while quietly protecting our own.

We can become very clever at seeing what we don’t want to see in ourselves.

This is where the inward journey becomes important.

Becoming conscious isn’t simply learning more about the world.

Sometimes it means becoming willing to look at what is happening inside us without immediately defending it, explaining it away, or pretending it isn’t there.

Because the moment we notice something within ourselves, we have a choice too.

We can turn away.

We can become defensive.

We can blame someone else.

Or we can stay with what we have seen long enough to understand it.

That small pause can change everything.

The moment you notice

Maybe this is why I have become so fascinated by the word sapience.

We tend to associate wisdom with knowledge.

But perhaps wisdom begins somewhere much smaller.

Perhaps it begins with attention.

With the willingness to look again.

To notice what everyone else has stopped seeing.

To notice what we would rather not see.

To notice the consequences of our own actions.

And then, importantly, to choose.

Not always perfectly.

Not always bravely.

Not always wisely.

But consciously.

Because the moment we notice, something changes.

The world has presented us with information.

And for one brief moment, before instinct, habit, fear, desire or conditioning takes over, we have a choice about what we will do with it.

Perhaps that is one of the smallest—and most consequential—moments in human consciousness.

The moment you notice.

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