Taking off the blinders

It's not unusual when you see a working horse, be it a race horse or even a farm horse, to see them wearing blinders. The effect of blinders on horses is to hinder their peripheral vision which keeps their eyes focused on what is directly in front of them instead of what is to the sides and to the back. The purpose of these blinders is to keep them focused, without running off course. To prevent them from being distracted and losing concentration on the direction they are supposed to be headed. 

Sometimes I think we go through life, much like these horses, with blinders on. Sometimes those blinders were put into place by others: parents, teachers, even the church. Sometimes I think these are blinders that we put on ourselves each morning when we rise.

Much like with the horses, these blinders have a similar effect and purpose. They keep us focused, and on course, and without distraction. They allow us to meet our deadlines and our goals and the purpose that has been set before us, either by ourselves or others.

Those blinders can help us to be incredibly focused and productive people. But they can also cause us to be people who are incredibly narrow and lacking in depth. By keeping our focus only on what is directly in front of us, we are prevented from seeing all the other things that are around us, the things to the side and the back of us. Things good and things bad. 

We miss beautiful relationships with amazing people because those people weren't in our direct path. We miss the opportunity to smell some lovely flowers because they were off to the side, and we didn't see them in our singular focus on what was ahead.

We also miss the things in life less pleasant than the friendships and the flowers. Issues of poverty. Issues of unfairness. Issues of injustice. We just don't see them. 

Unless for some reason they end up falling in the way of our direct path to our goals. Until they affect us in some way personally.

Then we see them.

And sometimes we can't see anything else.

Sometimes these things make us take off our blinders.  And instead of seeing only what is directly in front of us, we see the entire panoramic view. All the colors. All the flowers. All the people. But also all the pain. All the sickness. All the hopelessness. Our entire view shifts, both good and bad.

Perhaps we should take off our blinders before life forces us to, and start to see all that we have been missing with them on. Perhaps we should start to try to see not just our path but the paths of others. And to leave our paths from time to time to take the steps to walk those paths with them, holding out a hand when they stumble. We just may find that the path we were so focused on isn't supposed to be our path at all, and the path that we couldn't see because of the blinders is the one that leads us home.