# 252 – Peripheral Vision

Peripheral Vision (03-16-09)

If you have ever been to an optometrist, one of the tests that will be given for your eyes is to check your peripheral vision. The test will gauge how far outside of your normal central area of vision you are able to see. For lack of better words, it checks your side vision or those fringe areas where you are just able to see light or motion, but not necessarily distinct images.

Peripheral vision can be a wonderful thing and even a lifesaver. It helps you to duck out of the way of that wayward baseball coming at you almost from behind that you hadn’t expected. It helps you to avoid that car coming out of the side street as you are about to step off the curb. Hell, it even gives you a heads up on that mischievous friend of yours who is making his move to dump that beer on your head. Quite simply, peripheral vision allows us to keep tabs on the world around us while we are focusing on the world in front of us.

Recently, I went to a concert with a group of friends. It was loads of fun with plenty of music and laughter. But, as I was sitting there, taking it all in, I couldn’t help but notice the eerie glow of the many screens from cell phones and other electronic devices in the crowd seated in the rows in front of me. And that glow was not intermittent. For some, it was constant throughout the three hours of entertainment. One hoped at some point that the batteries would give out, but that was not to be. And, while there was no phone use allowed, in the sense of having phones ring during the concert, there was plenty of activity taking place. There was the ongoing checking for important messages by people who did not look in the least to me like brain surgeons waiting for that report on their patient. There was the constant text messaging, no doubt telling friends what a great concert this was, all the while they were so engrossed in their phone that they were actually experiencing as much of the concert as the friend on the other end of that text message. And, there was the ever-popular web browsing, I can only conjecture, to entertain themselves while they were, uh, being entertained.

All of these people, in a very real sense, were using peripheral vision. They had surrendered their eyesight for the events in front of them and were devoting the lion’s share of their attention to the fringe areas of their lives. In the same sense, just in noticing them, I was guilty of that peripheral vision, too, even though they were pretty hard to ignore.

It happens, more than we would like to admit, that we get caught up in the peripherals of our lives or in the peripherals of our training and forget what the hell we are really out to accomplish. We get so involved in picking the perfect program, the right shoes, the best moisture wicking gear. We obsess about micronutrients and macronutrients and percentages of proteins, carbs and fats that we eat. We try to get that perfect mix loaded on the iPod, or look constantly for that magic piece of equipment that will complete our training arsenal. And in all of this, sometimes we forget that the real purpose of what we do is to lift the damned weight and get stronger, run the damned course and get faster and eat the damned food and get healthier. We let our peripheral vision direct our actions and literally close our eyes to the goal right in front of us as we try to perfect the fringe areas of our training. If you are one of those people using your peripheral vision more than you need to, and I am as guilty as the next guy, then it’s time to look ahead. The only thing you want to use peripheral vision for is to stay out in front of that other guy coming up from behind, because he is the you of yesterday, and you don’t want him catching up while you’re not paying attention.

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