Blind Spots

I saw a German illustration yesterday, the purpose of which was to show pedestrians what a truck/lorry or bus driver cannot see; i.e., when you stand/drive/ride your bike in these areas, he is unaware of you. It’s not that the driver is in any way ill-intentioned; because of the vehicle’s construction and the placement of the mirrors, he simply cannot see you. I was amazed at how big those areas are, and how many of them there are!
To show especially schoolchildren how dangerous it is to be in one of those “dead corners”, as they’re called in German, they parked both a truck and a bus, extended rope barriers from the truck to surround each blind spot, then asked the children to stand in each of those spots so they could get a feel for the areas to avoid. I thought it was an excellent practical demonstration.

Everyone has blind spots. This is an axiom we all accept. Sometimes we just can’t help it; the size of our vehicle and the way our mirrors are positioned simply don’t show us what everyone else can see!
One of the purposes of having trusted friends or a loved one is that we help each other become aware of our own blind spots. Becoming aware of a personal blind spot should lead to our choosing to become especially sensitized to, for example, a negative effect we consistently have on others, with the goal of changing those behaviours.
It might take awhile, because we may still not really be seeing it, but we start measurably moving in that direction, and we give our friends the right to remind us. If we are even somewhat emotionally healthy, even if we still can’t quite personally see what the fuss is all about, we trust our friends enough to believe them when they tell us (especially repeatedly) that our X leads to their Y, and out of love and respect for them, we adapt.

We’re all prepared to understand and to a certain degree excuse blind spots in others, because hopefully we’re all aware that we have them, too. But there are situations in which we should stop excusing what we’re calling a blind spot, because that’s not actually what it is.

A blind spot is legitimate as such only as long as we have had no opportunity to see it, in other words up to the point that someone close to us points it out and tells us of the undesirable effect it’s having. As of that point, we can no longer claim ignorance. If several people have pointed out the same thing, and we still act unaware of the damage we’re causing, this is no longer a blind spot. In this case we are in some way more invested into remaining intractable than we are into the investment that changing would require of us.
For an innocuous illustration: a man who leaves his clothing where he drops it each night can be excused until his wife has told him --maybe a few times, because he’s done this all his life and habit is hard to break-- how much that annoys her, and requests him to be an adult and clean up after himself. From that time onward, each time he does it he is (however unintentionally) telling his wife: “You and your reasonable wishes don’t matter to me as much as my own personal comfort and laziness matters to me.” I know many wives with this type of lament whose husbands seem to remain clueless of the message they are sending.

Another axiom I’ve come across lately is this one (I think it originates from Maya Angelou): "When someone’s actions tell you who they are, believe them."

Now, we all have times when we slide back into bad habits or forget what we’d intended to change. I’m not talking about that. I’m taking about someone who, despite having been told, shown and entreated many times by many different people, remains immovable in the behaviours that harm others. Worse, this person may turn the tables on those who muster the courage to tell him how he has hurt them, and play the victim, using blame-shifting tactics: “I can’t imagine why you would think that of me. I never intended any harm. I’m so hurt you would judge me this way.”

If this person is in any kind of authority, especially spiritual authority, the damage is of course on a much wider scale. This is not a blind spot, but something more sinister. There is a deep commitment to remaining the same at others’ cost, and unknowingly at their own cost. Whether it is intended as such or not, it results in abuse. Abuse of peoples’ trust, their time and personal investment, their loyalty, their expectations that he would care enough about the effects of his brokenness on them to at least make an effort to change.

I was married to an emotional abuser for over 30 years. He had many fine qualities as well as his brokenness, and he would say to this day that he loved me and never intended to hurt me. But the fact is, he did hurt me; over and over again, and he remained defensive about it and unwilling to own it as his problem to the end. Protecting himself trumped as the most important thing in his inner life.
The fact that people who do this can be wonderful people in other aspects does not change the fact that a blind spot is only a blind spot until it is revealed; then it becomes something else. When we exemplify an unwillingness to see, own and change our revealed “blind spots”, we’re like a lorry driver who keeps running over people in the street with the excuse: “But I didn’t see them!” or, worse: “Well, they shouldn’t have been standing there.”