Our blind spots…
 
 

Last week I discovered my third blind spot. I believe there are many ,many more out there – yet to be spotted by me. All this while I only know the common two; one is the blind spot when I look into the side mirrors of my car and the other is the black (blind ) spot of Maxis coverage of my neighbourhood when I had to change from Maxis to Celcom. By the way, other cellular phone companies do have their own black spots as well.
 
 

The first blind spot was caused by the shape and location of my side mirrors as well as the location of my seat in the car. It is the spot where I could not see what  is coming either from the left or right. It is wiser to turn one’s head towards the right before one makes a right move-similarly to the left. Otherwise you may hit someone  or someone may hits you. This kind of blind spot is a danger zone.
 
 

The second one is the called the black( or blind) spot where the cellular phone coverage is very bad or nil. My house is located 3km away from Maxis Tower (next to KLCC) and yet there is no service at my home from Maxis( 012).  It is not as dangerous as the first one but one would be disconnected from the rest of the world. Two years ago when my car broke down along KL-Karak highway, I could not contact anyone even though I have both Maxis and Celcom. The only thing I could do was praying to Allah for the rescue vehicle to tow me back to KL.
 
 

After I have lunch with a wise man last Wednesday(15/05/2002), he took me to Page One section of Kinokuniya Bookshop at KLCC. He showed me a few big size books on bridges. We discussed quite at length on some world beautiful bridges.When  I told him that I like the recently completed cable-stayed bridge of Ramayana VIII in Bangkok , he disagreed with me and said that he likes the Golden Gate Bridge(GGB) better. When I aked him why, he explained that beauty of bridges should be judged externally and internally. According to him, GGB is rightly proportioned in size and the designer had incorporated harmoniously the internal forces in its structural members. To non-engineers, bridge has to carry its own load( dead load), live load( vehicles) and  environmental loads. These loads exert forces, moments, shears and torsions in the bridge structural members. It is up to the ingenuity( science and art) of the bridge designers to design the bridge structures to take care of all these forces efficiently and effectively. This discourse really changed my way of ‘seeing’ a bridge. Now, I don’t only see the external dimensions of the bridge  and the materials it is made of, but I try also to visualise the ‘internal beauty’ of the choice of bridge structural systems and interplay of forces( force/moments/shears/torsion) within  its structural elements and how each  interacts with one another.This was my third blind spot where I failed to see the internal beauty because it was ‘hidden’ by its exterior outlooks and my own ignorance and lack of knowledge and awareness. And this blind spot  does not only applies to bridge but also to many other things in my life or your life. Most of the time, we only see the obvious i. e the exterior part of anything, anybody, any events etc. In some case we also failed to see even the exterior dimensions due to our mental tricks to see only those we wish to see. On the other hand, many a time we failed to see the real thing because we were hidden or blocked  by our ‘location’ as well as the limitation of our ‘tools’ to see the real things.
 
 

Our ‘location’ does not refer only  to our physical location but also it refers to our intellectual and spiritual level of consciousness. In the case of car blind spot, the location refers to our physical sitting position and the tool refers to the car side mirror. To see what is hidden in the area of blind spot, we need to move our head or put additional small mirror. Likewise, if we wish to see more what are being hidden from us in many other blind spots in our life, we need to upgrade or change our ‘location’ or/and  use additional ‘tool’. In other words, we need additional or higher level of  knowledge or better technology or both to enable us to uncover  the many more blind spots in our life.

Looking back some two months ago, my cousin gave me a book entitled the Creation of the Universe. One example that I wish to quote here is that the sun is actually a nuclear reactor, converting hydrogen to helium. That alone changed my older perception about the sun- just a ball of fire! In this case, the blind spot was hidden from me due to my lack of knowledge. Most of the knowledge and the technology are readily available but our complacency or ego are self created barriers to learn new things.

From this lesson, I learnt that I have managed to uncover only a handful of my blind spots. There may be thousands or millions more out there that I don't even know they exist, what more to see them and enjoy  their beauty! Now, it is your turn to explore your very own blind spots if you can find them.....