NOTICE (FMF31 2019 Day 6)

I am participating in 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes 2019 (all of my submissions can be found here).

Today’s prompt is: NOTICE

My daughter is 23. I still think frequently about a daycare I went to when I was trying to decide on childcare options for her.

Each time one of the workers would step away from her class (to go to the restroom, attend to some issue, or whatever), she would look at one of her fellow teachers and say, “notice them for me.” (It was sort of an open layout, so her students were in the line of sight of the other teacher.)

This occurred several times during a relatively short visit.

I know “notice them” was really just a particular way this teacher had of asking her fellow teachers to take over the responsibility for making sure her kids were safe when she walked away, but the word lover in me bristled.

There are times in our lives when we “notice” something that we should do so much more. We should speak up. We should ask what is happening. We should see past the images, sounds and general emotion of the space to find out if there is a bigger issue.

We should act.

There’s a video used in a lot of trainings that depicts kids playing basketball. When played again, the trainer points out the gorilla that walked through the scene, that inevitably very few first-time watchers saw.

The point is to be observant, to not be distracted by a flurry of activity, to attune ourselves to seeing more.

If we do that, we may notice more areas where we can help a fellow human or learn something more about ourselves.