Narrow or Broad View?

An article several months ago in the Guardian presented an interesting symbol about someone attempting to predict future events: it contained a sketch of a person holding a flashlight, whose beam is shining out into the darkness—the dark representing the hidden future. The description with the illustration described that the holder of the flashlight could choose to focus the beam either into a narrow ray, or a wider cone. The narrower the beam, the brighter the light shone on any future object, and the more accurate a prediction might be. When the beam is widened, more of the future could be revealed, but less light is shown and therefore one's guess would be less accurate.

The article's main thrust was about one's hoping to be able to predict the future reliably (by shining that narrow beam on a potential forthcoming event), but then risking having some surprise event—lurking in the darkness outside the narrow beam—prove the prediction wrong. In order to avoid these surprises, the article described, one could widen the flashlight's beam and spot more potential future events, but only at the expense of a dimmer light beam and nothing being as distinct. It's sort of like a horse wearing blinders: it can concentrate on things straight ahead of it, but is blind to unexpected things to the side.

The image of choosing between the flashlight's narrow or wide beams stuck in my head for a couple of days. It spoke to me as a metaphor for more than just the topic of the article: futurology (the ability to predict future events based on present trends). I came to see the cone of light shining outward as an illustration of one's attention to life in general. If my attention is kept too narrow, my ability to respond to life's events may be well focused, but I can miss the wider picture. Like the horse wearing blinders, I may be able to focus clearly on what I wish to see, but by so doing, I can miss the bigger picture that life is presenting me.

Life is full of surprises. Although we like to think that we're on top of things and that we know what to expect (and thus make smart choices), that's usually not the case. More often than not, life tosses unexpected contingencies in our path, and we stumble over them. If we are too narrowly focused, we can get blind-sided by an event coming from the side that we never expected; an event that we were ill prepared for.

I guess, like many choices in life, it's a case of seeking an appropriate balance: sometimes we focus narrowly and deftly handle an expected event—like shooting an arrow right into the bulls-eye. At other times we should keep our senses open and broad—so we don't miss something that could be important. In either case, our motto could be: PAY ATTENTION!