What Are We Blind to?

You know that path you take everyday? The one drive to work or walk to the grocery store or exercise routine that repeats day in and day out? There are probably a dozen details your mind filters out about the journey. Maybe it’s an interesting mark on a tree, or a sticker on a sign that has always been there, or a beautiful flower that easily goes overlooked. Only by being consciously aware can you start to notice these things you were previously blind to.

Now on a larger scale, societally speaking, there are probably a million details we all overlook. We’ve taken them for granted because they’re all we know. It’s easy to be blind to things that have always been there. If we were constantly taking in all of the stimulation around us, noticing every minute detail of our surroundings and our interactions, our minds would be overloaded with information. 

But we can go to another extreme and live our lives on autopilot. All of this stimulation still occurs, but we just don’t realize it’s happening before our very eyes because our minds are somewhere else. Or maybe our minds are off. People could point out these details to us and we could get very defensive. “I’ve never seen this before, so it can’t be real,” we say. Maybe we try to point to arguments that prove that whatever they said isn’t the case.

Some very real examples of this, in our current society, are racism and sexism. Each day, they exist around us and we can choose whether or not we will see them. There are people who try to point out the details and wake us up to aspects of our world that we were previously blind to, but ultimately, it’s up to each individual to choose whether or not they will let themselves see it. 

The more I learn about the world we live in, the more I wonder what other details I’m overlooking. What am I taking for granted? What has always been there and I’m just filtering out? Am I purposely staying asleep to aspects of the world because I’m not ready to accept the fact that I’ve been ignorant for my entire life? Does the fear of addressing my own ignorance prevent me from viewing society realistically? Am I not ready to let go of parts of my own ego that are tied to a skewed perception of reality? 

Ultimately, all of the beliefs we hold are stories we tell ourselves. They are only small pieces of a much larger puzzle that is life. We think that we’re objective, claiming that the scientific method is the be-all-end-all, when really observation through our senses only goes so far. The objective reality is out of reach and we will never achieve this all-knowing power we desperately crave. But maybe that isn’t what we were meant to do after all. Maybe our challenge is in addressing the fact that no matter how much we think we know, we still know relatively little of anything at all. And maybe that’s okay.