It could be right in front of you and you’d never know.
Hello out there in the blogverse, and welcome to another edition of whatever you call this thing. my sincerest apologies for cannonballing into your email inboxes so late, I was caught up with a little something else. It’s called a job.
Yes, you heard correctly. I do have an actual job other than making blurbs so ridiculous that they’re hilarious. Yes, I’m moonlighting as a creative writer. It’s kind of fun.
Sometimes, my day job is kind of fun too. It doesn’t happen often but sometimes it’s interesting. That actually happened today.
Occasionally, (pretty much every day, now that it’s winter) I get up before the sun does and drive to wherever I need to be that day. I work for a grocery vendor so I don’t always work in the same place. Some days, it’s the next town over, others it’s an hour or two drive to get where I’m going.
Today was one of those days.
I poured my coffee, got in the car, cranked up the tunes, and drove through the darkness until I reached my destination some two hours later. After my work there was done, I got back in the car, pulled out some snacks, and hit the road for the trek back.
About halfway through the return trip, as I watched the trees on the side of the road go by, a thought struck me. I hadn’t seen any of this on the way up. I hadn’t seen the trees, I hadn’t seen the mountains, and I hadn’t seen the houses I was flying by. I hadn’t seen anything but the road.
In the dark, my focus was so narrow, because that’s all the headlights could illuminate, that I had no absolutely no idea that there was anything outside of what I could see. But as the sun shone its light over everything, I could see all of the wonderful scenery.
Now you may be thinking, “This is silly. Why would someone write an entire blog post on this?”
The explanation is that I’m writing this because I think we forget to notice things all the time!
We humans, become so focused and determined on whatever it is that we’re trying to accomplish that we forget to look around at the amazing world that surrounds us. We might even miss a path that makes it easier to reach that achievement.
It happens in golf all the time. Course architects create what’s called “Visual Deception.”
This is something that creates the illusion of hazard to your eye in the place you want to be. The better a particular spot to be in, the more hazardous it looks from the place you’re hitting from.
For example, the spot in the fairway that gives you the easiest shot at getting to the green will be surrounded by a hazard of some sort. Maybe the fairway abuts a cliff edge or a body of water. It looks like if you hit your ball close to those hazards you’re sure to lose it, but often they have plenty of room for you to land in. A simple game of deception.
When you play a course that’s built like this for the first time, your instincts naturally tell you to play away from the danger. It’s like wearing blinders that focus you on finding the safest path, but as you play that course more and more, you start to realize that playing closer to the danger gives you a better reward.
It’s something that you’d never see the first time around. It could be right in front of you and you’d never know. I mean, how could you? It’s something you have to learn through trial and error.
That doesn’t mean the cool stuff isn’t there though. Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Life is waiting for us to take off the blinders and look around. Who knows what you might see. There could be an entire world out there looking back at you.