Oh sure, you say, I know I have blind spots. We all do.

Mine came three days ago, when a scrap of my visual field disappeared. It is like a torn piece of tissue in front of my right eye, obliterating a portion of what I want to see. At first I couldn’t figure out why words on the computer screen kept disappearing. I thought it might be a side effect of the drug I was taking for the giardia (flagellate infection) my kitten so graciously gave me.

Whether instigated by the drug, or a free-standing incident, MS has decided to take a portion of my vision. My response: MS can’t have it–I’m going to get it back. So just as I got back the feeling in my feet by dancing, I am now taking extra vitamins and doing everything I can so this blotch, this blind spot, goes away. No guarantee.

Blind spots in our life are like that. Even if we become aware of them, they may be hard, or even impossible, to eliminate. Many of our ‘blind spots’ are not things we have chosen, at least consciously. They are imprinted on us by those who influenced us from a very young age. Because it happened to us before we were conscious that there were other ways of thinking, we may not even be aware.

I remember when I was young wondering why people were not more transparent about themselves. I didn’t realize the roles that fear and shame played in people’s lives, that individuals either did bad things and didn’t want other people to know, or believed that what they had done (or what had happened to them) was bad. I also didn’t know the power that fear and shame had over people’s lives, locking some of them into a pattern they never escaped.

They didn’t see how they were trapped. Or if they did, they didn’t see how to change the pattern. It would require too much change, living a life they had never learned…that they were blind to. If someone lives in a village inChinaand never sees television or movies or anything else from another part of the world, life is defined by that village inChina. What one eats and drinks and wears is knowledge that has been passed down for generations. Anything different is unknown. 

What are your blind spots?

What is their source?

When we are aware of and can understand what we are dealing with, we can take the action to eliminate the blind spots that are holding us back.

If there is no getting rid of them, we can also learn to work around them.

Are you letting blind spots hold you back?