Before we learn, we notice

 I’m interested in a process that is so simple and common that we often ignore it. It’s the way we notice things.

The other day as I walked along Zarzamora Creek, a baby saw my big dog and pointed.

We humans notice before we have language, before we can give reasons for why we find something remarkable, worth noting. But we still notice.

And sometimes we don’t. This baby’s father was so engrossed in his smart phone that he failed to notice that his infant daughter was pointing at my big dog.

Sometimes our attention is focused. Sometimes we’re distracted.

I’d like to know how that works, particularly now that I’ve joined the hearing-aid crowd. I’m frankly interested in squeezing the most out of life.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend who is not religious but who, like me, is on the downhill run told of having the sensation that the universe was speaking to him, trying to tell him something. He said he was doing his best to pay attention.

He wondered aloud whether he was going crazy, but we’ve all heard similar notions.

I’ve heard mystics say that God speaks to all of us through the people we love.

The Transcendentalists held that we could learn something about the underlying laws of the universe by paying attention to Nature.

Einstein said something similar.

The Ancient Greeks had oracles all over the place. One of my favorites was the Oracle of Hermes at the marketplace in Pharai in Achaea. It was common to go there if you were sick.

Pausanias says you approached the statue of the god, left him a small coin, and whispered a question in his ear. He would give you your prognosis — but you had to be paying attention. The god spoke through the first chance words you overheard as you left the market square.

Can you imagine how carefully a suppliant listened to his neighbors on that occasion? Can you imagine what the world would be like if we listened like that all the time?