 Driving
home today, I passed a traffic cop standing at the entrance to a strip
mall parking lot with a radar gun in his hand. It was the usual rush
hour crawl on Toronto's busy Yonge Street, and no one was traveling
anywhere near the speed limit, so he looked rather forlorn. But right
beside him was a lane of traffic called a 'diamond lane', which during
rush hour can only be used legally by public transit vehicles and cars
with at least two passengers plus the driver. This lane of traffic was
traveling about half the speed limit, but (because it had fewer
vehicles) much faster than the two left lanes. What was amazing was
that nearly all the cars in this lane clearly had no passengers at all.
When the light turned red, there was a whole line of illegal users of
the 'diamond lanes' sitting right in front of the cop.
But while the drivers were grimacing at the sight of the cop, the cop
was focused on finding (non-existent) speeders, and was utterly blind
to the stream of lawbreakers sitting right in front of him, each
needlessly dreading being waved into the parking lot and ticketed. The
passenger-less driver who was stuck beside me looked over at me as the
light turned green again, shrugged guiltily, and drove off.
How
often does this happen -- that we're so focused on looking at (or for)
one thing we miss something else, something outrageous, obvious, important, right under our noses?
If you missed my link to the famous Daniel Simons 'basketball' illustration of this phenomenon, go look at it now.
I write a lot about the importance of learning to pay attention, to really see. But sometimes we can be just too focused, to the point incredible opportunities are missed.
There's a related phenomenon, one that comes not from focusing too intently but from not knowing what to look for, or not knowing how to 'make sense' of what we are seeing.
An example: On at least a half-dozen occasions, with different people,
friends I've been visiting have complained about their dog's 'annoying
habit' of running right in front of them when they're walking and
getting underfoot, or cornering the cat, or nipping ankles, or chasing
cars. They tell me they've done everything to try to 'correct' this
behaviour, and are convinced their dog is either stupid or doing it
deliberately to annoy them. To me it's obvious: What we're witnessing
is the dog's inherent herding behaviour.
The poor dog is trying to herd his or her people, to get them together
where s/he can keep an eye on them. Likewise the poor cat is a
substitute lamb, and the car a substitute steer. If these owners could
witness their dog's response to a small group of sheep, they would
immediately say Aha! and understand what they'd been witnessing. They just didn't know what they were seeing.
The
consequences of missing the obvious are profound: Having the perfect
career opportunity pass you by. Not noticing the potential love of your
life looking with interest your way. Neglecting to consider the
innovation that could solve a huge and intractable problem, when it was
right in front of you. Ignoring the self-evident (but alas, only to
others) opportunity for Let-Self-Change that could make you incredibly
happy, or incredibly useful to society.
The most frightening thing about missing the obvious is that, unless someone else catches it and tells us, we'll probably never know what we missed.
What
can we do to prevent, or at least minimize the chance of this happening
to us? How can we learn to pay attention without losing track of the
forest for the trees? How can we better prepare ourselves to know what
to look for, and to make good sense of what we're seeing? Is this what
friends are for?
How often have you slapped yourself for
overlooking something so obvious you're astounded you didn't see it, or
think of it? Do you have any good stories about people (feel free to
change the names to protect the guilty) missing the obvious? (And if
there's a chance we'll miss the story's message, even if it's obvious
to you, don't forget to tell us what it is!)
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
