Aug 20 2009
How blind can a man be?
Well the answer is……………very!
I love it how in life you can have moments of incredible lucidity, where you see very very clearly how things are, and what people are saying or writing. THEN on the flip-side are those moments where you TOTALLY miss what was being said, or right under your nose, or before your eyes. I had a situation like this just recently, and yes I feel stupid and embarrassed I could be so blind and thick, but in other ways I am grateful for the wake up call.
For me the wake up call comes in several ways.
1. It is a reminder that I don’t always get it right, that it’s wise to challenge your own thinking and perceptions regularly.
2. It has made me realise that when you recklessly settle into a certain modus operandi or way of being as a person that doesn’t see you challenging who you are and how you see things, that is when you can do dumb things and totally miss the point or go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with reality or the situation.
My aka is BlindPoet, and I have come to see how appropriate that is for me. If I was an American Indian the name would suit me down to the ground.
This week in my teaching doing listening activities with the kids I came to the realisation that the brain generalises sounds. When you think how the brain remembers and stores every sensual intake we have, that’s a lot of information. When we hear something, I think the brain throws up all the possiblities given that stimulus sound. If the brain had to scan every sound for a match it would take ages. So it throws up a lot of sounds like options. What we have to do is question the options and sort details out in the stimulus sound to see if they match the brains options/memories. That’s when it becomes listening. Listening and hearing are two different actions. We actually need to challenge what the brain thinks the sound is.
And so it is with what i think I read, or am hearing from someone or maybe even feeling.
What I think someone is saying and what they are actually saying may be two different things. It needs me to challenge what I think they are saying. When we get to a space like we just leap to our first understanding of something, that’s when we are at risk of missing the point and getting it totally wrong.
It takes a wake call, embarrassing yourself to realise hey mate, step back, slow down. Jumping to conclusions happens because I think the brain gets lazy, or we get to set in our ways.
Growing always has a level of discomfort attached.
And me being embarrassed is a growing pain.
Clear as mud!
When I think I am seeing very clearly, or acting as if I always have insight, I am possibly the most blind.
2 Responses to “How blind can a man be?”
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I think I see what your saying or maybe I’m hearing it.
Anyway, I can relate to what you are saying. Growth can be hard to endure but we must grow. Stagnation kills all that is around it. When I truly listen I find I hear more. Too often I have started talking within my head in response to only the first of what they have said. I went through an exercise where I was paired with another person. We sat in chairs facing each other. We were asked to give an answer to a question but only allowed 3 minutes time to share. One person was to share and the other was to listen. The listener could not repeat, nod, acknowledge until the 3 minutes were up. I felt the listening to be the easier of the two. The sharing for 3 minutes seemed like an eternity.
In response to blindness. Some of the most sensitive and creative people in the world are blind or partially blind. Some have even received better vision over time.
Wow, did I ramble. I’ll be quiet now.
Hey Monte
I could not agree more about blind people and sensitivity.
There is a fav Helen Keller quote about people who can see but have no vision.
I do try to listen I really do, and I think I am a good listener usually, depending on how much coffee I have drunk.
I am also a fairly observant kinda guy, more than most I would think, but in only seeing some things, not everything.
Everything needs to be challenged lovingly and gently in yourself.
I am so over beating myself up as I have done for the last 52 years.
The danger that the post relates to is mainly me thinking I see or hear what I hear with perfect clarity. When that goes unchecked, I can get things wrong.
While growth can be embarrassing and requiring endurance as you say, mild kinds of growth which touch on things that are in your own power to change leave me feeling like I have had a good workout. Tis a delicious kinda warm exercised muscle stretchy feeling. NOT all growth is like that unfortunately.
I appreciate your visit and thoughts Monte.