Tunnel vision

TO give us more ideas and better nuanced understanding of what tunnel vision means and implies, we can list down some of its synonyms: blind spot, blind side, blinders, constricted vision, fixation, monomania, myopia, narrow outlook, narrow-mindedness, obsession, one-track mind, shortsightedness.

It’s important that to be truly effective without unduly dominating others, our leaders and those who occupy positions of authority, power and influence, be it in politics or the academe or the media or the church, etc. do their best to avoid having a tunnel vision. Indeed, everyone, leader or not, should avoid tunnel vision.

While it’s true that we can have our own preferences and even strong convictions, we should always be open to others and their views, even if they are diametrically opposed to ours. Yes, we should learn how to properly deal even with what we may consider to be a clear, obvious mistake or wrong position.

Truth and justice are not really served by force, or violence, or intolerance. It’s is charity that does it. It’s charity and its integral parts of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, understanding, patience, etc. that do it.

Truth and justice without charity would not be genuine truth and justice, since charity is the mother and determining virtue. For all other virtues and ideals to acquire their true status, they need to be inspired by charity. They have to begin and end there. Charity is their gold standard.

Without charity, truth hardens and becomes rigid, heartless, indiscriminate, blind. Without charity, justice deteriorates into a game of recrimination, vengeance, making even, bickering and mutual accusations ad nauseam.

Wisdom and broadmindedness are not so much a matter of ideas as of charity. Justice would be incomplete if it does not seek the path toward charity, but sticks to the satisfactions of one’s anger or grief. It has to go beyond who is right and who is wrong. And justice should try its best not to be blind so as to see people and things properly and act accordingly.

And where does this charity come from? Obviously from God who, as St. John says in one of his letters, is love. “Deus caritas est.” This love is revealed to us and given to us by Christ who perfected all the commandments by saying, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

He proceeded to prove this by offering his life on the cross, making as his own all the sins of men, past, present and future. By dying on the cross and resurrecting, he took away the sting of sin and death to open the way for us to be reconciled with God and perfect our own dignity as children of God.

We should try to open our minds and hearts to this truth of our faith, and not insist on restricting them with a tunnel vision of life. Christ’s passion, death and resurrection should open our minds and hearts to all the possibilities, good and bad, in our earthly life.

One time, a seminarian asked me if it was because he made a wrong choice of wanting to become priest that he was then suffering a lot of financial difficulties. I told him, not necessarily. His wanting to become a priest need not be the cause of his money problems. I told him he may be barking at the wrong tree. The difficulties can be due to other reasons, not his choice to become a priest.

Media people, especially those involved in public opinion, should be very careful in articulating their views. While they may express conviction of their views, they should be very open and respectful of the views of others, no matter how different from theirs. Especially in matters of opinion, there can be many conflicting views that are also valid.

In the latest sports craze in the US about Tebow and lately the phenomenon of Linsanity, some columnists have practically showed their bias against religion by saying that the moral ethos of sports is always in tension with the moral ethos of religion. In short, sports and religion can hardly be together. The corollary is a sportsman who professes his faith publicly must be an anomaly.

Ok, that’s one view, and I respect that. Let me just also say that sports and religion can and should be together since religion embraces all aspects of our life, including sports.

And sports itself is one more arena where the game of life is played. Since life will always have a religious dimension, whether we like or not, then sports can only reflect it and prepare us to its ultimate end.