When was the last time you really looked? Not just glanced around, but looked – the kind of noticing that makes you pause mid-step, as if you’ve stumbled into someone else’s story. The kind of moment you would usually pass by, but instead you let it interrupt your thoughts, just long enough to fully take it in. This attention is what social media calls The Art of Noticing: a skill few people practice these days, especially in the whirlwind of responsibilities and the daily rush of life. 

To notice is to see how the trees’ shadows move across the facades you pass by on your way back home; to watch peonies elbow for space in a florist’s basket; to catch a mother’s gaze filled with love and worry as she looks for her child at the playground, or the way the tiny beads of sweat glisten on the forehead of a clearly nervous student, clutching papers in his hand while pacing and revising out loud. To notice is to see the little things. The way people smile at their phone: that private smile, small and unstoppable, aimed at the glowing screen. Nobody else knows what forced the grin, but it seems to spill over to each person whose eye catches it. The girl in the corner of the store’s dressing room, holding her phone up to her mom’s face as she spins from left to right again and again, trying to catch each angle perfectly, waiting for approval. The sound of the slightly out of tune guitar, tangled in the air of the busiest street in town that somehow gets through the murmur of hundreds of shoulders brushing against each other, each holding up their own thoughts and worries – and yet, the guitar seems to mute the rest of the world for only a split second, but just long enough to feel like a breath of fresh air. 

To notice is to hear a group of girls’ laughter mixed with the lyrics of a song blasting on the car radio as they stop at a red light, all four windows down; to witness a couple switching plates at a restaurant because she clearly liked his dish more; to pass through a door held open by someone who lingered for a few seconds more just to wait for you. It’s paying attention to small gestures, such as the chivalry of filling the girls’ glasses first, done mid-conversation, without skipping a beat. It’s watching a group of friends as one of them tells a story that takes on a life of its own – the narrator leaning forward, her eyes wide, face expressive, words spilling out too fast to catch, hands flying around passionately. Her friends absorb each word of the story with an insatiable look in their eyes, never wanting the drama to end, the story evoking gasps, giggles and no way’s throughout. For a moment, the whole café seems to pulse with the rhythm of the tale, but then it goes back to cups clinking and chairs moving as soon as you look away from the group.  

To notice is to see the head nods of the person with headphones in a tram. To spot the confident way someone walks when they clearly thought their outfit through to the smallest detail. To observe how, before an exam, one classmate is always subtly moving their lips while their legs fidget, another quietly rubbing their necklace with a cross on it. It’s knowing one of your friends always uses only half of the sugar packet for their coffee. It’s being able to read the smallest twitch of the face of someone who just heard something that rubbed them the wrong way but decided not to show it. It’s catching each hair tuck after hearing a kind word. Each side eye between the duo of the group. Each cheek-blushing after a kiss. Each voice change. Each sigh. 

None of these moments will ever make the news or the history books. They vanish almost as soon as they appear, yet they soften the edges of our days and stitch warmth into the ordinary. They remind us that life isn’t held together by big milestones alone, but by fragile threads of attention, by gestures and glances that carry whole worlds inside them. And what’s the point of rushing through life if we overlook the very details that make it human? As Marcel Proust wrote,“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”