Posts Tagged: expectational blindness

“Expectational Blindness”

On March 19, 2020 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Do you ever experience “expectational blindness”?  I’ll bet you do!

In case you don’t immediately know what “expectational blindness” is, let me give you a simple example that happened to me just the other day.

My wife has been having some back problems.  She was lying in bed and was going to get up and get a strap that she uses to do leg stretches.  Being the good husband that I think I am, I exclaimed, “I’ll get that for you!”

To make sure I didn’t get lost, my wife said, “It is in one of the two bottom drawers on the left side of the dresser.”  I looked diligently, but without success.  “It’s red,” she said, giving me another helpful clue.  The lady knows me.

“Nope,” I said.  I’ve learned to hedge my bets, so I added, “I’m not saying it’s not here; I’m just saying that I don’t see it.”

She got out of bed—painfully—hobbled to the dresser, and immediately pulled out the band from one of the drawers where I had diligently (??) searched.

“Didn’t you see this?” she asked.

“Of course, but I thought it was a scarf or something,” I replied, with enough humility to make even St. Francis proud.

“Well,” my wife continued, “why didn’t you pull it out to see what it was?”

I thought for a moment, and answered with obvious logic, “Because I didn’t think it was the strap you were looking for.”  (Now that I write this down, I see that my logic was neither obvious nor logical.)

I was expecting some other kind of stretching band, apparently.  And my narrow expectations had caused me to be blind to reality.  Hence the term “expectational blindness.”

I would like to believe that my situational blindness is limited to red stretching bands, but I don’t think that would be a healthy belief that is based on reality.  The truth is that I have practiced expectational blindness for many decades.  I’ve gotten quite good at it.

And, of course, when you’re blind you tend to stumble around a lot.  And you bump into other people.  Being blind through no fault of your own is a serious matter.  Being blind due to your own expectations is just plain stupid.

A twelve-step friend has often said, “An expectation is just another word for a premeditated resentment.”  Yes!

Probably, most of us pride ourselves on being open-minded.  However, I doubt that many of us are.  We all have blinding expectations.  Perhaps all expectations are blinding.

I wonder what would happen if I went through just one day without any expectations?  Maybe I should try it and find out!

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