Blind Spots
March 31, 2022
By Jeff Becraft
We all have blind spots.
Years ago, I started cutting my own hair. And I cut it much shorter now – I get better gas mileage that way.
The other day my wife says to me, in an astonished sort of voice, “What did you do to the back of your head?”
Well… I have no idea what I did to the back of my head. I can’t see back there.
But obviously, my wife saw things I couldn’t see.
The first time I ever cut my hair on my own was 16 years ago. Our son, Josiah, and I were heading to Florida that afternoon to catch baseball’s spring training. I wanted to cut my hair before we hit the trail.
I started off with this contraption that I saw advertised on TV. It didn’t go so well… and I was running out of time. So I thought to myself, “Well, I’m going to just have to cut it short all over.” I got out the real hair clippers and went to work. I thought, “How difficult can this be?”
The clock was ticking and it was taking longer than I thought. I realized I just needed to take it all the way down. I finally finished, got showered, threw the bags in the car and headed out to our son’s school to pick him up.
As I am standing there in the attendance office waiting, our son finally shows up and as soon as he sees me he starts laughing. He had never seen me with a buzz cut before.
We jump in the car and head down the interstate. At that time, I had a ’92 Subaru (a sweet ride). It had a 470 air conditioner which means 4 windows down at 70 mph. As we are heading down the road, our son starts laughing again… but this time harder.
I say, “What are you laughing at?”
He responds, “What did you do to the back of your head?”
Why do people keep asking me these questions? I can’t see back there.
“I don’t know… why? What’s going on back there?”
What was going on was that I had missed a section on my head and there was a patch that was still about an inch and half long and as we headed down the road, it was sticking out like a rooster tail and flapping in the breeze… just as happy as it could be.
He fixed it that night at the hotel.
We all have things in our lives that we can’t see. But other people see them. And we all need people in our lives who know it all – the good, the bad, and the ugly, and can walk with us in life, love us in the middle of everything, and can ask the tough questions: “What’s going on…?”
We really do need one another.
Jeff Becraft is the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Youth Corps is a life-changing leadership development experience that inspires high school students to be leaders in the Midlands and beyond. You can connect with Jeff at [email protected].
