juggling act

I've been reading about attention and the neurology of how it works. According to science, we're not capable of dividing attention at all. When we're focused on something, we become blind to everything else. A lot of what we do is a juggling act, wherein we have to manage two or more activities at once. We alternate to the best of our ability, but can't actually focus on more than one thing at a time.

We are ignoring most of what's around us all the time. We rely on mental models to provide context, e.g. I know that as I type this, my computer room isn't going to change much. I know what the area behind me is like, without looking or even thinking about it. Likewise, as I've grown, I've formed ideas from experiences of a world that existed at the time.

It is the world I know, but it is not the world that we live in now. As I get older, so much of that same past has faded. Like old scars, the worst of them fading, all sorts of minor cuts, scrapes, and burns, now gone forever. Which is really to say, no longer a part of me in the same way, any remaining influence being indirect. I barely even know the person I used to be anymore.

We have all sorts of blind spots, habitually focusing one way over another, all our lives. The more we are thinking, the less we are seeing. What we're not seeing, we won't remember. Not thinking is no solution. What good is seeing without comprehending? This shapes our understanding of everything, but to get it right seems like it should be less a feat of singular focus, than one of great juggling.

In retrospect, I was wrong an awful lot, for feeling so much more right than everyone else. Everyone else was just wrong, too. Turns out, that's how the human condition works. We can only focus on one thing at a time in an infinitely complex world. At this point, I think it's pretty safe to say that we're all going to be wrong about everything always.