Myopia - Talk 20 of 25

Topic: Myopia

Theme: The Human Condition  

Author: Barry Sweet

Date: January 7, 2018

Video Production by Tim & Karen Morse. Morsephotography.com

The dictionary definitions for myopia are “near-sightedness or short-sightedness”.  Some dictionary definitions call it “selfish”. My first and earliest definitions of myopia were “like having a pair of glasses on that have mirrors on the inside and all you see is yourself…” As time went on, they sort of morphed a little and turned into “When you're driving down the freeway… Anybody that's driving slower than you is an idiot. And  Anybody that's driving faster than you is a maniac”. See how that puts you as the center of all definition? (And I think that's a George Carlin joke). And then through the years, it morphed one more time… It’s sorta that I become unsatisfied with the definitions because they're not comprehensive enough and finally I came to the one that I use today which is “The micro-bubble, the mezzo-bubble and the macro-bubble. 

We work in a National Park where we have a Communications Center which is called Dispatch. They've got lots of things going on at once, and lots of phones in there that they're handling different emergency situations and emergency phone calls and just regular phone calls. 

So when we're in the office, I try to teach the Rangers to (when they call Dispatch) to say “Hi, this is Nicole. Do you have a minute?” And they can say “No. We're swamped” and they hang up or they go “Yeah it's quiet… What have you got going on?” Because when we call, at any point during the day, Dispatch can have a guy dangling with a bashed head from Long's Peak… An 11-year-old girl separated from her party in the wilderness or a felony stop on Trail Ridge Road with doors open and guns pulled. And they don't have time to answer our question about where to find the yellow stickies. And yet if there's nothing going on in there… and we say “Hi, this is Nicole, can you tell me where are the yellow stickies? They say “Yeah, they're down in the supply room”. But when you have a micro-bubble there's this bubble around your head and you're the only thing in it. And that's why you call and say “Hey, hey, can you tell me where are the yellow stickies?” (without saying “Hi, do you have a minute?) And so a mezzo-bubble (in contrast to that…) there are other people in your bubble. 

That's when you would call Dispatch and say “Hey, do you have a minute?” And you're sort of open to what they've got going on. And not only that, you can go one level deeper since they have five telephones… you can say (when you hear the phone ringing through the phone at their end…) you can say “Oh, hey, do you need to get that?” And they really appreciate the fact that we're sensitized to the fact they've got a lot going on and they might not have time for a superfluous question at that point. The next view is of the macro-bubble… and that's when your bubble is so big that it includes people in India that are starving because before we had the media and the press we didn't really know that people were starving in India. 

We just lived our lives. But now because the information streams are so huge we feel guilty for things worldwide. And at work, I just encourage the staff have a good healthy mezzo-bubble, that other people are in your sphere of concern and reference, and you're not caught up in just your own little world where all you can see is yourself, and your own concerns, and you're the only thing that matters. But other people matter too. but not quite too big, so that it becomes an unruly.