Blind Spots

A friend sent me a web link to an instructional video on how to properly adjust one's car mirrors and minimize blind spots while driving.  I had already been driving for decades with a nearly spotless record, and was skeptical that I could possibly learn anything that I wasn't already doing.  I figured that the video would be about as useful as those with claims like, "Eat these ten foods if you want to die from cancer," or "Tax saving secrets that the IRS does not want you to know!"  The video actually was unexpectedly informative and well done, and I have taken the recommendations to heart ever since.  Every car has blind spots that can present serious driving hazards, but one is much less likely to swerve into adjacent vehicles if the mirrors are properly adjusted and used, and if one knows where the remaining blind spots are and checks them with a turn of the head before changing lanes.  However, even the best driver will occasionally fail to see the trailing vehicle in the adjacent lane, and it may take an angry honk of the horn from the other driver to avert disaster. 

I started to think of blind spots in a more metaphorical sense, i.e., each of us has certain blind spots in our lives and experiences that are likely to be sources of misunderstanding and conflict.  These blind spots may be maladaptive personality traits, ways of doing things, habits, anxieties, fears, viewpoints, etc., that are blatantly obvious to other individuals, but may totally escape our own attention until they are pointed out to us.  I certainly have many blind spots, and I know that they are blind spots because I often made the same errors repeatedly, and never saw them coming.  I suspect that such tendencies are not restricted to just myself and those who appear on Dr. Phil, Jerry Springer or The People's Court...the same likely apply to each of us in some way as well.

In view of this, it is good to figuratively "adjust our mirrors" once in a while, to occasionally turn our heads and to heed the warning honks of vehicles into whose paths we are intruding - through introspection, through prayer, and by being attentive to wise counsel.

A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.  (Proverbs 15:1)

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!  (Psalm 139:23-24)