How Wide Open Are Your Eyes?
I suspect many of you may live in areas which prohibit being on your cell phone while driving. The intent of such laws is to keep you focused on the main task you are doing, driving, while putting aside other items that can take away your attention. Recently my hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey announced they are taking things one step further. A proposal has been offered to fine those pedestrians who are walking and cross the street with no attention to the traffic, but instead are focused completely to the messages on their telephone. While the proposed town ordinance is still under discussion, its intent is clear. While a pedestrian, one’s primary focus should be to the traffic in the street, and not on other things, especially as the pedestrian is entering a crosswalk or somehow or another coming in contact with the street.
I have always loved the scene in the movie Annie Hall, where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are sitting in the park and observing and commenting on the different people that go by. There is some of that in myself. Often I eat lunch alone most days, often at local restaurants that I enjoy. I often look to get a table facing the window. I’ll look out and watch the world go by. Sometimes I can see potential accidents about to happen even before the participants in them, because of my focus on what is in front of me. Or I have been hanging out at the mall, and will glance up from what I am doing and be flabbergasted to see that at least 50% of those passing by, (if not more), focused on their telephones with eventual collisions with other passers-by a likely outcome. The ultimate is seeing two people walking together, both focused on their phone and not talking at all to each other. I shake my head and say, what is our world coming to?
How wide open do you keep your eyes on a daily basis? Do you know what is going on around you, or do you keep getting “awakened” out of “the fogs you let distract your life?” In past blogs, I have spoken about being open to the opportunities around you. That can only happen if you let yourself not get absorbed completely in yourself as opposed to what is going on around you. We choose that on which we focus. And, yes, sometimes we need to make that focus very narrow. That works well when we are zeroing in on whom it is we might serve or what talents we may offer to others.
However, when we are in exploration, keeping our senses opened to as many things going on around us is important. With what items do people appear to be struggling? Where may there be a niche market for a new service not currently offered? With whom may we be able to combine our efforts? Are there different people we know that perhaps we should be connecting? (And, if you ask, why would I do something like that, you don’t believe in the fact, that what you give to others today, may come back to you multiple fold when they think of how they can help you tomorrow).
And, please don’t feel that I’m immune to this being aware of everything going on around you in your world. Before, I sat down to write this blog I was making a grocery list for the local store with my wife. One of the things I indicated needing to get was milk. My wife said, did you not see I brought a half gallon the last time I went to the store, and that it was on the shelf? Sheepishly, I admitted I had not, (and for good measure I opened the refrigerator to check out that indeed a new carton was sitting on the back top shelf of the refrigerator).
So, moral of the story I guess is that we all can at times only see what we want to see. But, if we look to limit the distractions and the assumptions of what we believe is around us, it may open us to awareness of items which we don’t always see. And, that may lead us to the next big step forward in our life.
