Noticing & Naming: A Monthly Practice

Honoring things that don't last

Much like its mixed landscape, March brought work deadlines, decisions to make, bouts of sickness, and plenty of everyday living, but it also held bright spots—pizza nights, birthdays, a quick road trip, a spontaneous brunch. It was a month of both bare branches and new blooms. Today I’m sharing four things I noticed and two things I named in an effort to give us a little more language for this both/and life.

Four Things I Noticed

I’m trying to pay attention to the world around me and to the details of my days. Sometimes these observations may lead to bigger realizations, but other times, the act of noticing is enough. Here are four things I noticed in March:

1. An older woman walked up to the automatic doors of a box store, put both hands out in front of her, and said “Whoosh!” as if commanding the doors to open. They did, and she smiled slightly before walking inside.

2. I’ve been reminiscing a lot about my college days. I’ve been deep into two books—one I’m reading and one I’m editing—that have transported me right back to K-State’s campus. I’ve been picturing the limestone buildings, imagining myself in the library, and remembering the feeling of hanging out in dorm lobbies and at campus ministry gatherings.

3. The blooms. First it was white flowers peeking over the top of our fence, then saucer magnolias near our neighborhood park and forsythia bushes in our backyard. Next came the dogwoods, the redbuds, and the cherry blossoms, filling my vision with color everywhere I looked.

4. Sadness at the sight of those beautiful blooms beginning to fade and fall.

Two Things I Named

I have a loud internal life, and naming what’s going on on the inside helps to quiet things down. When we can put thoughts and emotions into words, fear begins to lose its power, next steps come into focus, and we realize we’re not actually alone. Here are two things I named last month:

1. I’m working on building trust with myself.

I want to be able to trust that if I tell myself I’m going to do something, I’ll do it. I’m much better at following through on commitments to other people than to myself—it’s far too easy to talk myself out of things (like why I should put my writing off for another day).

A wise coach recently told me that one way to build trust is to make minimum commitments to myself: small goals that I know I can hit. The commitments should be meaningful, they should move me toward a goal that matters, but they should also be small enough that I’m confident I can complete them.

If I stretch too far too fast and I don’t follow through, it’s easy to get discouraged. But completing a few small, time-bound commitments is one helpful way to gain traction while building trust with myself.

2. I want to grow in enjoying things that don’t last.

One thing I noticed last month was that I felt sad as I watched early spring blossoms begin to fall. Pink and white petals collected in rings at the base of trees, and green buds overtook the bright yellow forsythia. It’s a relief to see green after such a long winter, but I was disappointed that the colors faded so quickly. I wanted to hold on to that fresh hopefulness a little longer.

In How to Inhabit Time, James K. A. Smith argues that while melancholy is an understandable (and sometimes necessary) reaction to transient things in life, it doesn’t have to be our only response. He says:

“An awareness of transience can deepen appreciation and gratitude. . . . The intense beauty of the cherry blossoms is haloed by the short life of each bloom. What is required here is a specific kind of attention. Thus Abutsu-ni, a Japanese nun from the thirteenth century, counseled poets to, above all, pay attention: ‘They must know mono no aware, “Ah-ness of things”—sensitivity and the ability to perceive things as they are—and keep their mind clear. They must notice and keep their heart alert to the scattering of flowers, the falling of leaves, dew and showers, and when the leaves change color.’ A sensitivity to the ‘Ah-ness of things’: that, it seems to me, is the way to enjoy even what is transitory.”

If you “perceive things as they are,” you’re in the present moment. You’re not asking that thing to be something it’s not. You’re not hoarding it. You’re seeing it for what it is and appreciating it in this moment.

You’re letting it be beautiful, even though it will change. You’re grateful to have it, for now.

This feels hard to me, to be honest. I believe paying attention matters, but I tend to want to collect and hang on to moments of beauty and goodness, be it flowering trees or a delicious meal or the way the light looks at golden hour. This desire to capture things is one of the reasons I write and why I’m quick to snap a photo. I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want to forget. And I know that, inevitably, I will.

But I’m curious what it looks like to cultivate this specific kind of attention to things that won’t last. How do I release my fist a little and become more aware of the “Ah-ness of things”? How can I learn to honor and appreciate all that is transient?

Questions for Your Practice

1. What’s a minimum commitment you can make to yourself in the near future? Think of something that’s meaningful enough to move you toward a goal but small (and specific) enough that you know you can get it done.

2. What does the phrase “the ability to perceive things as they are” mean to you?

3. How do you typically feel toward things that you know won’t last? What’s one way you could honor and appreciate those things?

Words That Resonated

In an effort to give us more language for our lives, here are three quotes that stuck with me last month:

“William walked the sunbaked paths of the famous, looking at strangers and wondering not if but how they had been hurt and how well they’d recovered. When he paid close attention, he could almost see their stories in their silence, like the wake that trails a boat.” —Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” —Abraham Lincoln

“For every creature, to be is to become; to exist is to change; to have and to hold is to lose and to mourn; to awake is to hope.” —James K. A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time

Thanks for being here. If you make a minimum commitment to yourself or pay attention to something transient, I’d love to hear about it.

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