I was reading about the Rihanna Umbrella nonsense about one of her songs with the evil lyrics the song contains. Someone has a wild imagination and too much time on their hands. There was a bright side to skimming the story though.
Reading that dribble led me to think about a trip to a park a few years back. I had taken two of my Grandsons to a park. I looked around at all the people at the park with their families enjoying the afternoon and enjoying being with each other, having fun. There were families who were at the park, but no having fun and definitely not enjoying each others company.
The youngest Grandchild’s focus was on perceived ‘Gang Bangers’ (his words). He thought the park was full of them to the exclusion of everyday families enjoying the nice weather, and warm lazy day we had. He was so focused on Gang Bangers real or imagined, he became anxious. This Grandson sure either we were going to be attacked because we weren’t part of a Gang, or a gunfight was going to break out at any second and we would be in the crossfire.
The other Grandson was pretty quiet for the most part. It took a little while to figure out why. He was enthralled with all the young, his age, women at the park. Those young Women were all he could see. He was oblivious to families, ‘Gang Bangers, and the afternoon.
Of course I noticed a few young men who could have been gang members, and I certainly noticed more than one or more pretty women. If the Grandkids noticed anything other than what they were focused on they did not mention it.
I am sure everybody reading this has watched at least one, “Men in Black” movie. The movie is loosely about aliens in New York, along with the alien airport situated among millions of New Yorker’s who never seem to have noticed. Those few who did notice had memories erased. The Men in Black were right there with their memory erasers, ensuring the secret did not get out.
I remember a watching video (maybe 2 if I have them mixed up) where you are told to watch how many times a basketball ball is passed back and forth in a group setting. After the video is over, you read a Dancing Bear waltzed through the group, and myself like most people do not see it. I had to watch the video a number of times because when I was not focusing on the ball being passed, it was incredible how obvious it was.
In a recent movie where Jeff Bridges plays a worn out Country Singer who finds something good for once. Along the way, Bridge’s character loses a four year old boy in a mall setting. Out of desperation he informs mall security, and the first question mall security asked is, “What was the boy wearing?” Of course Jeff’s character did not know, he was focused on the boy and not his clothes until that moment.
Speaking of credibility, the net is also full of documented cases of how poor we are when it comes to being an eye witness. If you find that idea odd, think about someone close to you, and what they were wearing the last time you saw them.
Why this happens is to keep us from being overwhelmed by everything happening around us. We create an idea of how everything should be and that is what we see. In the example of the people passing the ball back and forth we do not expect to see someone in a bear suit dancing through the group, so we do not. What clothes someone is wearing are not as important as what their expression is, or how and what they are saying, so we block it out.
This idea really has me wondering how much happens around us that we never notice because it is something we do not expect to see. Maybe those few moments in our life where we witness something we can not explain, an apparition, ghost, monster, whatever it is, maybe they are more common than we think. Maybe because we do not expect to see anything unusual we do not?
The same applies to what some of us read. Two people can read the same small book, and one person struggles to get through it, while the second person another wonders if they ever really will get through the book with all the amazing insight the pages contain.
The same idea also applies to our world and our problems. We see our problems the way we have always seen them. We solve them in whatever manner we have always solved problems. It works so why change it.
What would happen if when the next problem happens, we look for a Bear dancing through the center? You may not see a Bear, but when the same type of problems repeat over and over like a television rerun, perhaps trying to see it as if you have never had the problem before will help you see it in a new way?
Maybe after seeing the problem in a new way, a new solution will be found and the problem will go away for good? Maybe better yet, looking for the dancing bear in the problem may lead to the realization that the problem is not a problem at all, but rather an opportunity?
A problem turning into a dancing bear situation is definitely something we are not used to seeing. Perhaps we need to start looking for the dancing bear. Who knows where it will lead if we solve a few problems and then start looking for dancing bears other places.
