Friday, August 14, 2009

Overlooking the Obvious



I had to stop for a train on South Main the other day and for the first time noticed this ghost sign on a building. It made me wonder how many things I'm missing every day. I've driven by this building hundreds, maybe thousands, of times, and I've never noticed this sign.

I will be delighted for someone to tell me it has been covered with a metal front until recently and I've not been able to see it. But, I fear that is not the case, and that it's just another multi-story reminder of how oblivious we can be to our surroundings.

Why is it so easy to overlook things so obvious? Well, the real answer is that it's an effective way for the brain to work. It processes things in our "norm" quickly and without really investigating them because if we had to carefully consider every object we ran into in a day we'd not be able to accomplish much.

But there must be a happy medium somewhere between that oblivion that registers "buildling" and nothing more, to scrutiny of every bit of flaking paint. Between those two is a way to be more in tune with the world around us, and still functioning well within it. Apparently I'm still searching for that spot.
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