The surrounding foliage is an aureate blur in my periphery as fallen aspens crunch under my bike tires.\u00a0 This is a trail that I ride frequently; I have come to know its undulations and corners perhaps too well.\u00a0 Emblematic of overconfidence, not a single finger rests on my brake levers.\u00a0 Ignoring the peril to my upcoming ski season, I embrace my newfound and hard-earned comfort with speed and mach over the rock garden, not entirely sure whether the shouts of joy are internal or voiced aloud.\u00a0 All of my senses are tuned to the trail as it unfolds in front of me, a myopia of the most magnificent order.<\/p>\n
Then, a flash at the edge of my vision and all instantly goes squirrelly. Whether an actual rodent or a bear or a figment of my imagination, it is immaterial.\u00a0 I turn my head to clock the source and lose the focus necessary to keep me tracking straight and true.\u00a0 The front wheel goes first and, as I jack the handlebars, I already know that I am overcorrecting.\u00a0 I feel the rear tire unhook and everything become much more wobbly than strictly preferable.\u00a0 A nanosecond of distraction, at this pace, threatens disaster.\u00a0 I narrowly escape a launch into orbit and put the bike down, the only consequence a rather harsh rock massage and ensuing abrasions.<\/p>\n
Extrapolated, my flirtation with grave injury provides insights across the spectrum of my personal and professional lives.\u00a0 With three vocations, fatherhood, recreational obsessions, and a robust familial and social life, there appear to be infinite ways in which I can be distracted from any of the given tasks that I need or want to accomplish each day.\u00a0 An ever-shifting triage of priorities makes it all that much more difficult to determine upon what I am to focus in the moment.\u00a0 Believing innately that anything worth doing must be done to its highest potential, it is only through intense discipline that I can resist the lure of what exists, or might exist, outside of the scope of my immediate attention.<\/p>\n
Conversely, there is great beauty and promise at the farthest reaches of our vision.\u00a0 It is no small feat to remain locked in whilst also maintaining mental flexibility to absorb the unexpected.\u00a0 As important as it is to crank through that which is in front of your face, much of the magic happens on the margins of life.\u00a0 Lurking at the fringe could be something as seemingly inconsequential as a pretty view or as momentous as the love of one\u2019s life.\u00a0 Overly ensconced in trying to make a specific legal argument, I may miss an important perspective, overlook a controlling precedent, fail to consider how best to elicit testimony.<\/p>\n
At the edge of vision, the images are rendered in phantoms and shadows.\u00a0 From these grainy pixels, one can conjure anything:\u00a0 saviors, enemies, promise, terror, epiphany, destruction.\u00a0 Whereas the center of our vision reassures and perhaps tricks us into believing something that might not be real, the elusiveness at the brink of our sight reminds us that there is no such thing as certainty, that all of existence is malleable.<\/p>\n
Corporate drones, psychotically concerned with productivity, do not view the daydreams at the edge of vision as having any value.\u00a0 Inherently, those modalities do not welcome nuance.\u00a0 But success is not one-dimensional, either in measurement or in the paths taken to achieve it.\u00a0 Legendary athletes combine relentless concentration on the goal\/basket with supernatural field\/court vision; their victories are a pastiche of the center and the edge of vision.\u00a0 As always, there is not one right answer; the trick is view your life in panorama, a collection of different images that give insight into all possible angles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"