You probably haven’t noticed that many of my blogs I have posted have within them a deeper and succinct meaning that are ultimately connect to a wider society idea that in scripted in that is a common pattern which appears within each blog post, of course you probably don’t notice that a professor in semiotics might but to the naked eye we see the fancy bold entitlements and the visual images or videos embedded in the posts. Noticing is a skill and although we are observant of our surroundings the question is how much do we actually notice and remember in great detail? One form of noticing is intentional noticing, this establishes the idea that at first glance something seems obvious but in a closer look things are much more complex and far reaching than what we first see. Since we glance simplistically in many scenarios on a day-to-day basis what we fail to notice is unlikely to have a lot of influence upon our actions and the way we act. I was on the way home from the lecture on the train in the afternoon and the lady across from me was very loud, obnoxious, clearly disturbed about something and her behaviour was appalling. She was talking to herself, cursing and anyone who made eye contact with she would verbally abuse. At a glance I thought what a disrespectful women, but when I noticed things deeply and analysed her situation I realised there was a reason behind her behaviour. She had a bag with her belonging in it, a pillow, photographs, toys, clothes, cosmetic items, and other personal belongings. She later received a call where she was in a verbal stoush. I soon realised that her abusive husband had kicked her out of her house and she was transporting items from the house including toys for her young baby who I would imagine she was visiting. She had bruises on her arms and face and I genuinely felt sorry for her. I think it can be easy to judge a situation if we just take a simple glance on it, we notice the person is there but we don’t notice their scenario, their story, and possibly the reason why they would be acting a certain way. Like Mason established in his article that noticing is sharpened and can be developed and refined, if you pay attention to something, as an audience we are sensitised to it. As to quote Bateson 1994 “distinctions have been drawn between ordinary-noticing, marking and recording. These are the backbone of noticing, of sensitising oneself to notice, of undertaking systematic professional development, and of converting development into research. The essence of noticing is being awake to situations, being mindful rather than mindless”. I think that if you become empathetic toward a particular situation you notice the personal aspects and the layers which build the way a scene is layered, the personal scenarios, the reasons for a reaction, the reason why something is there or why someone acts or reacts in a particular way. Noticing is one thing but paying attention is another. 

Michael Serpell