"Just Noticeable Difference": Nature-style
A Year of Noticing - Day 285
Sometimes growth and changes happen in such small ways, and so slowly that it’s almost imperceptible. I think I heard a term that many companies use in marketing when making small changes, a “just noticeable difference”, when actually the theory is that companies make small changes to size, pricing or other variables in subtle ways so that it won’t be noticeable to the consumers! (Starbucks, I see you and your ever increasing prices and shrinking cup sizes!! Maybe I didn’t notice when the price went from $4 to $4.50, but now that it’s over $6… I’m going to make my own coffee, thank you very much!)
Anywho, that is a completely different direction than I was planning on heading today… when I noticed that the baby Canada geese, that I’ve observed through the spring in various areas from a mother goose sitting on the nest… to the curious goslings munching on grass under the watchful eye of the adults.
Some of the changes are big changes, like from egg stage to gosling. As the goslings have grown over the past month or two, I have noticed small changes - the goslings I have seen have gotten a little bigger, and their feathers have darkened a little, but none of those changes were really perceptible from one day to the next.
The past few days we’ve been watching large groups of geese slowly swimming past our cabin in very large groups, often with only two or three adults and ten or twelve goslings. I noticed they were looking bigger… but today as one of the groups swam by, I noticed that the colours of the feathers suddenly had a massive shift - the gosling teenagers were starting to show their adult colours! Yesterday, I’m certain the geese still looked like teenager goslings, and now I had to look closely to see which were the adults and which were the teens (or young adults)… or whatever term applies to the growth cycle of a goose!
It was the demeanour and poise of the geese now that demonstrated who the adults were, watching over the teens as they voraciously nibbled at the weeds and grasses - always hungry!
In a change that seemed to happen overnight, in actuality is the culmination of a few months of growth… now the change is easily perceptible… and isn’t that how change works.
Sometimes all the small, subtle shifts that occur in life are hardly noticeable, but when we look back over who we were two months ago, six months ago, or a year ago - that’s when we can really see and notice the difference! And when we notice, it is a great time to pause and acknowledge the shifts and changes, beyond the “just noticeable difference”!
xo
You can find all the previous posts in A Year of Noticing HERE… including some previous times I’ve noticed the Canadian geese throughout the year, there are more… but here are a few! (How very Canadian to mark the passage of time by the shifts and observations of Canada geese - LOL!)
