Blind Spot

“We should all work together individually to help on many different fronts.”

Blind Spot

My daughter was sitting by my side when she said, “I watched you check your blind spot, that’s good!”

I was driving.  She was my passenger. Now, these many years later, she’s a driver as well.  That’s a good thing, because now, when we’re together, she is very capable of watching out for blind spots right along with me.  After all, I’ve found that there are times when I don’t watch out for myself as well as I ought to.

In fact, there have been at least two occasions when I’ve been in such a hurry and simply sort of driving on “auto pilot” in my own driveway.   I didn’t have any one with me.  I was careless.  I backed into the car of friends of my daughters on both times!  There are no excuses here!  I was so wrapped up in my own head, assuming that everything was the way is almost always is, an empty driveway, that I didn’t take the time to check my own blind spots. So, now, when I’m backing up and my wife is in the car, she reminds me to take the time to actually check behind me before begin to back up.  It’s just a friendly reminder that makes a huge difference.

Her gentile aide-mémoire has been instrumental in causing me to appreciate other types of types of blindness from which I may suffer.  We all have such blind spots in our lives.  Do you know the kind of thing I’m talking about?  Not one of us think completely through things all of the time.  We also suffer from a lack of good judgement from moment to moment because of our own emotions every once in a while.  Recognizing this can make all the difference in potential outcomes!

Appreciation of our own potential weaknesses can open the way for us to enlist some “blind spot identifiers.”  Finding such identifiers can be relatively easy and is as simple as talking through challenges with members of your family or close, trusted friends & advisers that you know have your best interests at heart.  People who have shown you, over an extended period of time, that they have good judgement and care for you.

And, there are times when you also need to show your own good judgement and confidence in them by listening to and accepting the counsel from your trusted advisors. Because, there will likely be times when you aren’t thinking clearly and you don’t want to hear what they have to say.  That’s how you’ll know you’ve likely identified another blind spot!

So, here we are, you and me, driving through life with lots of potential blind spots.  Let’s make sure we include some well selected passengers to travel through life with us, now and for many years to come to as well.  It will be a good thing, because when we travel together, our trusted advisers will be very capable of watching out for blind spots right along with us.  After all, we’ve found that there are times when we don’t watch out for ourselves as well as we ought to.

Those sitting by our side will say, “I watched for your blind spot, it’s all good!”