The Discipline of Noticing

I found that ‘readers guide’ to Forms of noticing was pretty straightforward and was just a repetition of what I already knew, however spiked my thought in regards to the forms of noticing, essence of noticing and the more technical terms of noticing. I was however interested in the types of noticing- i.e ordinary noticing- Seeing something that you can recollect afterwards and make a ‘mental note’ to remember for future reference. Whether intentionally or not.

In relation to how to remember what you have noticed, I found that part of the article interesting, however, I do that already. So found myself wanting to skim over the section in search for something that I didn’t already know.

What I liked about this reading, is that it made me think back over my day and I tried to force myself to remember the visual things that I did and saw. I remember the visual image of sitting on the tram and looking at Federation square, however I don’t know why my brain chose to remember these visuals considering they are unimportant to my daily life. Yet it made me consider the fact that I catch trams and have to detour to federation square almost everyday, so the visuals that I see have been somewhat engraved into my brain as I see these surroundings very often. I don’t notice that I am noticing if that makes sense…

As well as noticing my environmental surroundings I began to be very conscoius of my own actions. My room mate pointed out to me the other day that I have a certain ‘stand’ when I’m in the kitchen. When she pointed that out to me I found myself doing it everywhere! I would stand a certain way whilst waiting for my tram or whilst waiting in line. I began to think of all the other things that I do that I don’t notice, but other people do.

Let’s just say I am very conscious of noticing things at the moment because of this reading! However, like everything, I will soon forget about noticing the little things and go back to living like I did before.

This lead my thoughts onto memories and what our brain chooses to remember. The earliest memory I can find is the memory of sitting on our old leather couch in Malvern with my best friend and next door neighbour when I was about five years old. That’s it, that’s my memory. It’s not a drastic part of my life and I guess I have no real reason as to why I should remember this part of my childhood, but I do. As I tried to consider the possibilities as to why my brain has chosen to remember this I began to wonder whether we have control over our memories.

Do we remember things because we have seen pictures and this confuses our brains into remembering the event? And why do we remember some things and not others?