The Blind Spot of Attention

Notes of Being #05

I used to own a condo in downtown Calgary back in the early 2000s. It was glorious. My wife and I could walk to work and never worry about traffic or parking. In fact, just about everything we needed—and wanted—was a hop, skip, and a jump away. We couldn't imagine ever living anywhere else.

That is, until we had our first baby.

Children have a remarkable way of rearranging your priorities. Suddenly, the walking distance to schools and parks matters far more than your proximity to pubs and restaurants. Life doesn't simply add responsibilities; it changes what you notice.

One of the biggest challenges after our daughter was born was finding childcare. We lived downtown, and it seemed everyone who worked in the core but lived in the suburbs had the same idea: bring the kids into the city for daycare near the office. It was a smart plan, if you ask me.

For us, however, it created a huge problem.

There was a two- to three-year waiting list.

"What?"

"You mean I was supposed to put my baby's name on a waiting list before conception?"

"People do it all the time," came the reply.

I consider myself a fairly organized and thoughtful person, but this level of planning struck me as absurd.

Eventually we did find someone to care for our daughter, but there was a catch. Every morning we had to leave downtown, drive about thirty minutes across the city to drop her off, and then drive all the way back downtown for work.

It. Was. Crazy.

Where I had once spent my mornings walking along crowded sidewalks, I now found myself crawling through equally crowded streets. Streets that were one-way. Streets that forced turns. Streets that ended without warning. Streets that were only open during certain hours of the day.

The city I thought I knew had become an entirely different place.

I had travelled those same streets for years, but always on foot. As a pedestrian I could walk wherever I pleased, in whichever direction I chose. As a driver I was funnelled, redirected, and moved along at the speed of cattle.

I found myself envying the people on the sidewalks.

They were like queens on a chessboard, free to move almost anywhere. I, on the other hand, was like a king: comfortable inside my vehicle, protected from the weather, but constrained by the very comfort that was supposed to make life easier.

There was one intersection in particular that always tested my patience. It was a dual right-turn lane that was perpetually backed up. Not only were dozens of vehicles trying to make the turn, but hundreds of pedestrians were crossing at the same time. On a typical light cycle, maybe one or two rows of cars would make it through before the signal changed again.

I can still feel my frustration rising just thinking about it.

The pedestrians weren't being malicious. They simply walked.

If the crosswalk countdown was nearing zero, they hurried. If the light had technically changed but everyone else kept walking, they kept walking too. When enough people behave the same way, the behaviour somehow acquires legitimacy. I never once saw anyone being ticketed for it.

To be fair, when I was a pedestrian, I did exactly the same thing.

As a driver, though, it was stressful.

You had to watch the vehicle in front of you, anticipate pedestrians stepping off the curb unexpectedly, and negotiate a long sweeping right turn—all at the same time. Every few seconds your attention shifted somewhere new.

After a few days, however, you found the rhythm. The stress faded. The pedestrians became predictable. It wasn't the pedestrians who concerned me anymore.

It was the drivers who had clearly never run this particular Kessel Run before.

(That's a Star Wars reference for those readers who aren't in the know.)

They behaved erratically.

They would stomp on the accelerator, lurch forward, slam on the brakes, and stop inches from either a pedestrian or the bumper ahead of them. You could honk your horn, but it wouldn't accomplish anything. They weren't distracted.

Quite the opposite.

They were paying far too much attention.

Every ounce of their concentration was being poured into one narrow problem at a time. First the pedestrian. Then the car ahead. Then the traffic light. Everything else disappeared.

I've noticed this isn't unique to driving.

It's what all of us do when we're overwhelmed.

We narrow our attention to whatever feels most immediate, and in doing so we quietly exclude everything else. We often celebrate this as focus—as though the ability to concentrate intensely were always a virtue.

But every act of attention is also an act of exclusion.

To notice one thing is necessarily to overlook countless others.

Ironically, it is often when we are at our most focused that we are also at our most ignorant.

The difference is that ignorance doesn't usually announce itself. Focus does. We praise people for being focused. We admire concentration. Yet attention is selective by nature. Every perspective creates a blind spot.

One morning the vehicle directly in front of me was exhibiting all the familiar signs of someone new to that intersection. The sudden jolts forward. The abrupt stops. The nervous hesitation.

Then, as they reached the front of the line, something remarkable happened.

They didn't turn.

They simply drove straight ahead.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

Directly into the vehicle beside them in the outside turning lane.

Accidents happen all the time. I understand that.

But this accident was different.

It unfolded almost in slow motion.

Their front bumper gently kissed the other vehicle. Then it slowly folded into the driver's door. Then, inch by inch, it began pushing the other car sideways. There was a strange chorus of scraping metal, hopping tires, and one very persistent horn.

The struck driver leaned on the horn continuously.

It made no difference.

The other driver continued pushing them sideways for what felt like six full seconds before finally realizing what they were doing.

It's easy to say they weren't paying attention.

But that isn't what happened.

They were paying immaculate attention.

Their attention was simply so consumed by everything happening around them that they became blind to what they themselves were doing.

They were in a turning lane.

And they had forgotten to turn.

I think we all do this from time to time.

We become overwhelmed by everything happening around us and lose sight of the one thing for which we remain responsible: ourselves.

We become so concerned with everyone else's responsibilities that we drift out of our own lane. We begin policing the mistakes of others while becoming strangely unaware of our own.

You can see it in workplaces, in families, online, and especially in politics.

Once we've decided that our task is to monitor everyone else's failures, our own become surprisingly difficult to notice.

That's one of the dangers of ideology.

It doesn't simply tell us what to believe.

It quietly narrows what we're capable of seeing.

The unsettling part is that none of us knows when we've become ideologically captured. That's precisely how ideology works. It shapes our attention so completely that its blind spots become invisible to us.

So what do we do?

I think the answer is charity.

Not charity in the sense of giving money or possessions.

Charity in the older sense.

The willingness to interpret another person's actions and motivations in the most generous light we reasonably can.

Perhaps they are focused.

Perhaps they are overwhelmed.

Perhaps they are simply seeing a different part of the road than we are.

That doesn't make every action correct.

Nor does it excuse genuine wrongdoing.

But it does remind us that every perspective has its blind spots—including our own.

Every act of attention leaves something unattended.

If that's true, then our first responsibility is not to become more certain.

It is to look up.

Subscribe to Newsletter