This essay won first prize in the Golden Nib for non-fiction and just appeared in the 2023 edition of The Golden Nib, an anthology of the work of Virginia writers.
0:00
/
0:00
Love Is Blind-ish
Last winter, we bought a car that came with many safety features, including a blind spot monitor. Unfortunately, the monitor did not prevent someone who borrowed the car from backing into a Mercedes Benz. I’m not upset about the mishap.I have great affection for the borrower of my car which caused me to frame how I viewed the accident. I decided that the driver had been facing a Bermuda Triangle of extenuating circumstances: a drainage gulley, an impossibly narrow road, and of course, the Benz in a blind spot that our new detector did not detect. Fortunately, the Benz owner had a great attitude. She said, “Accidents happen. That’s why we have insurance.”The collision disabled many of our car’s safety features, including the blind spot monitor. Because of supply chain issues, a dearth of repair persons at the dealership, and blah blah blah, we’ve had to wait seven months for the car to be fixed.So, up until recently, whenever I started my car, a message flashed on the dashboard, “BLIND SPOT MONITOR UNAVAILABLE.” Those words sent a quiver of anxiety through my soul. My mind filled with possibilities of myriad annoying and/or lethal automotive and personal situations for which I now lacked warning.Physiologically speaking, blind spots are a fact of life for us humans. A blind spot is an area within your vision that you cannot see, an area where your view is obstructed. Our eyes possess two blind spots at the entry point of each optic nerve, places where there are no light sensitive cells. The absence of light sensitive cells means that the brain receives no messages from those two areas. We don’t notice these blind spots because our minds fill up the blank areas with information it creates apart from reality.German neuroscientist, Benedikt Ehinger, wondered if we subconsciously know that our filled-in vision is less trustworthy than real vision. He devised a study to test this question. Even when given evidence that shows the opposite, the study found that subjects trusted the information invented by their brain more than what they clearly saw in the outside world. Ehinger observed that this information fits in with what we know about cognitive biases. He says, “When people hold strong beliefs, they are likely to ignore any evidence to the contrary.” Years ago, when my oldest two boys were toddlers, I believed I was the paragon of parental parity. I recognized that one of my boys tended to pitch a fit to get his way, whereas his brother tended to go with the flow. Regardless, I knew I loved my five-year-old and three-year-old equally. Moreover, I felt convinced that I treated them equally. But one day, my friend, Margaret, gently told me that I often placated the fit-pitching boy to the detriment of his go-with-the-flow brother.“Thank you for your observation,” was what my mouth said while my mind protested, “You’re dead wrong.”Not long after, my father filmed the two boys and me as we banged on rhythm instruments while singing two thousand verses of She’ll Be Coming Around That Dang Mountain. At one point, the fit-pitching child declared that he wanted to switch instruments with the go-with-the-flow boy. Determined to make it to the end of the song without interruption, I grabbed the instrument from my easy-going child and handed it to the demanding child. As fit-pitching boy and I bellowed the last verses of the song, my other son looked bereft, which, of course, I didn’t notice at the time. Later, when I saw the clip, I faced visual evidence of my blind spot, me responding to one child in a way that harmed the other. Soon after, we visited a family therapist who made some great suggestions for how to change the dynamic. I listened to the advice, following it closely,
