We’ve never had more to look at. So why do we notice less?

A small, dark part of me hopes there is a lonely, analog corner of hell reserved for people who close the airplane window shade during takeoff and landing.

Does the punishment fit the crime? No. Am I justified in thinking so? Probably not. But if you’re a window-shade closer, hear me out.

But first, let me hear you out. I get it. You’re a frequent flyer. This is just a normal day for you. That episode you’re trying to get through cannot wait. And God forbid you miss those last few Reels before we lose signal. That’s lost wisdom you’ll never get back.

And the thought of being impressed by the miracle of flight? Unfathomable. For a five-year-old, maybe. Not for you.

You’re not like your primitive ancestors, who dreamed of flying for thousands of years before the Wright brothers managed twelve seconds in 1903. At some point you probably did wonder how this massive metal tube could vault over the clouds and float, but that was years ago.

Now, you’re hyper productive, whether that’s work, entertainment, sleep, whatever. Sure, there’s a reason many airlines require shades up during takeoff and landing: if something goes wrong, the crew can see whether there’s a fire outside before opening an exit. But what are the odds? And those five minutes simply can’t be wasted on something as…empty…as looking out the window.

The other day I flew a red-eye from SFO to Washington. It was the 39th time I’d flown that exact routing and the 65th west-to-east red-eye I’ve flown across the country.

The San Francisco and Oakland skylines, connected by the lit-up Bay Bridge, glowed below. Once we crossed the Oakland Hills, I fell asleep against the window.

I slept better than I usually do, and when I woke up three and a half hours later and peeked outside, I saw how brightly the interstates and small-town grids spread out below. We were five miles in the air and I could make out individual trucks. In the distance just under the left wing, I could see the unmistakable glow of Chicago, a curving string of lights traced against black Lake Michigan.

If you know what you’re looking at, it’s stunning. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, it’s still stunning.

I’ve spent years lecturing friends, family, and anyone unfortunate enough to share a meal with me about the virtue in keeping the plane window shade open. Nobody has asked for these lectures. To my knowledge, nobody has enjoyed them.

These lectures rarely go anywhere. Mostly I’m still bitter about some blazer-clad guy in the window seat who once robbed me of seeing the skyline of New York or Boston or Tokyo unfolding below.

But the more I think about it, the more the argument holds up.

Familiarity doesn’t exhaust an experience.

Just because we’ve seen something before doesn’t mean we’ve understood it, much less noticed everything there is to notice.

That’s where curiosity comes in. It’s what allows us to continue to discover things even when we’ve encountered them a thousand times before. And the ability to see the familiar with fresh eyes is, I’d argue, essential to achieving anything significant.

Stephen Curry was in the top one percent of shooters when he entered the NBA 17 years ago. As I write this, he has taken 67 free throws this season and missed one. How has someone who was already great kept getting better? Not by finding a new shot. By noticing smaller and smaller things about the one he’d already mastered.

An amateur thinks repetition means there’s nothing new to learn. A master knows that repetition is how you discover what you’ve been missing. Whether you’re shooting your hundred-thousandth free throw or taking your hundredth flight over New York, the ability to notice what you missed the first 99 times is what makes continued discovery possible.

Curiosity and observation are skills we can develop through practice, and neglecting them poses a danger we seem oblivious to.

I suspect the window-shade closer and the doom scroller have more in common than either would care to admit. Familiarity tells us there’s nothing left to see. The feed makes sure we never have to check.

There’s a reason animals raised in captivity often meet their end quickly when released into the wild. When food, protection, and everything else required for survival are provided, there’s no real need to develop the skills necessary to obtain those things independently.

A tiger doesn’t stop being a tiger because someone feeds it every day. But if it never has to hunt, it won’t become very good at hunting.

I think something similar is happening to our brains.

We haven’t lost our natural capacity for curiosity or for seeing the everyday, over and over again, with fresh eyes. But when entertainment, novelty, and information are delivered to us constantly, how much practice are we getting at finding those things for ourselves?

It’s like nutrition, only mental.

A Snickers can satisfy your hunger. It delivers calories, tastes pretty good, and provides an immediate payoff. But a steady diet of candy isn’t going to give your body what it needs to thrive. It’s empty calories, and sooner or later you’ll pay a price.

I see the entertainment Meta feeds us in much the same way: high-fructose corn syrup for the brain, aka Reels. It can quell our immediate craving for interesting things without nourishing our ability to find things interesting. It will show us a sculpture, but won’t help us learn to look at a slab of stone and see David.

A 2025 study* found that people sometimes chose to satisfy an immediate urge for information even when another subject interested them more. The study doesn’t say screens are destroying curiosity. But it raises a question I find troubling: if we keep feeding those immediate urges, what happens to our ability to pursue the deeper interests that take patience and effort? And what if the satisfaction is really only found in the patience and effort themselves?

That’s why I think noticing is a skill worth deliberately cultivating. Anyone can be stimulated. The internet has made that effortless. But noticing requires participation. You have to look at the world and find something worth exploring. You have to ask why a neighborhood looks the way it does, where a river leads, or what caused the strange pattern of lights beneath your airplane.

Sometimes the answer leads to another question. Sometimes you discover something surprising. Sometimes you realize how little you knew about something you’ve been looking at for years. On the approach to SFO, there are bright pink and red pools along the edge of the Bay. For years I assumed it was pollution. Turns out, it’s salt-loving microorganisms that turn the water redder as it evaporates.

And sometimes, you experience wonder.

I think the ability to find wonder in ordinary things is a superpower. Imagine being able to find something fascinating about almost anywhere. Not because the world is constantly shoving spectacular experiences in your face, but because you’ve developed the curiosity to discover what makes even the familiar stay interesting.

How much richer would life be if we didn’t need someone else—and increasingly something else—to entertain us every spare moment?

My friends who play poker like to say that if you can’t spot the sucker at the table in the first thirty minutes, then you’re the sucker. I don’t play poker, but I like to think that if you can’t find something interesting at whatever table you’re sitting at, perhaps you’re the uninteresting one.

The world is full of things worth noticing. And every time we choose to investigate one of them, we’re building a muscle that makes us more independent, more perceptive, and more capable of finding enjoyment in the world around us.

The more we depend on screens and algorithms to take that responsibility away from us, the higher, I fear, we may be building the walls of our own zoo.

Maybe that’s why I lose my shit over a closed window shade. Outside, there’s no algorithm selecting the most interesting view for you. No captions explaining what you’re seeing. No guarantee of anything spectacular. It’s only the world…waiting for you to find something worth noticing.

Sometimes it’s the full splendor of the Tokyo skyline. Other times, damn it, just clouds.

Wait…but why are some of those clouds so much darker than others?

***

*Ohad Dan, Maya Leshkowitz, Ohad Livnat, and Ran R. Hassin, “Urges Now, Interests Later: On the Factors and Dynamics of Epistemic Curiosity,” Cognition 259 (June 2025): 106107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106107