Living: the ultimate team sport

Improving Our Vision

Posted on August 29, 2022 Updated on August 29, 2022

We often have been instructed on what it means to truly listen, especially when it comes to hearing what someone else is saying. Just nodding our head and saying “uh huh, uh huh” may not be an example of effective listening.

What about our eye sense? Do we see what’s really there? Not always, and here’s a case in point.

I have family members who have tree nut allergies so we are all very diligent about using ingredients – and serving foods – that do not contain tree nuts and were not processed in a manufacturing plant that may have processed tree nuts as part of their business.

I donated a huge Costco-sized bag of chocolate chips to this particular tree nut sensitive household the other day and checked what I usually check: the list of INGREDIENTS and the all-important CONTAINS notation on the bag. Said elements listed nothing of danger to that household.

Turns out the Costco-sized bag of chocolate chips had an ALLERGEN INFORMATION statement that I missed but fortunately the household member who was about to use them did not. Ugh, this could have been a disaster of emergency proportions!!! You’d be correct in saying that the statement seemed plenty large enough to notice, but that was not the case for me. We are blind to so many things, some of which are less tactile. Had I not assumed the CONTAINS and INGREDIENTS statements were sufficient, I would have scrutinized the bag more thoroughly.

So too in life, we may not notice elements that would be beneficial in making appropriate life decisions. This particular allergen situation could have had dangerous outcomes, but less dangerous incidents of “blurry vision” could still impact us.

This lesson has clearly taught me that I need to greatly improve my vision in a tactile sense and a life-direction sense.

I feel I’m a good listener most of the time, but it’s obvious my vision is far from being 20/20.