The Perils of Tunnel Vision

This past Sunday brought us the season premiere of the twentieth season of what is the best reality program on television, "The Amazing Race."  None of this season's teams are ones that I want to root for instantly but there were a few that either creeped me out (here's looking at you, Clown Couple) or made me wish our nation's obsession with New Jersey was a distant memory, like that skank Snooki's healthy liver (here's looking at you, Jersey tools).

The episode ended with an epic bungle by one team - a pair of hard-driving athletic sisters, who, by their own words when they filmed their walk of shame, said that they had "a lot of heart."  What they did not have was a lot of sense or even a clue.  They were literally a few feet away from the finishing line of the first leg and they never even saw it.  They claimed they were stuck by this:

TUNNEL VISION
All they had to do was to look to the right and they would have seen the show's host, the unflappable Phil Keoghan, and they would have coasted across the mat for the final position. Instead, they freaked out, looking straight ahead and screeching that they couldn't find Phil.  Even when they turned around and ran out to keep up their futile search, they still didn't see Phil.  It was all over for them at that point as the two tools from Jersey (seriously, Governor Christie, I think the theory that any publicity is good publicity no longer applies to your state - make it stop) made it across, thus subjecting us to at least one more episode of their ridiculousness.

This televised undoing of a team got me thinking - how often have I been guilty of the same?  Being so blinded by tunnel vision - the things unfolding around me - that I didn't see the solution right smack in front of me...as I pondered that, more than one example from my own experience came to mind.  I'd say we've all been guilty of it at one time or another, but mercifully it's not been on television or cost us a chance at $1,000,000. How often has that tunnel vision caused me to do something rash, unkind, or to judge harshly? Sadly, more than once.

While when He was on the earth, the Savior never mentioned 'tunnel vision, He did talk about the things that block our vision.  At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, He admonished us to "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Why? Because the judgement we unload on others will be the same yardstick by which we will be judged (ouch!).  He then went on to teach:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Who knew that an episode of an Emmy-winning reality series could be so instructive?!  Turns out it was a good learning moment for me.