The Obvious

I attended a class this evening in which we were given a quiz. All I could do was shake my head as several of my classmates sighed, gasped, and/or exclaimed how they had no idea what the answers were. The week before, the professor had made clear what the reading assignment was and had given some indications that were clear to me as to what the quiz would be on. I guess what is obvious to me is not so obvious to others though. In fact I know I have missed many things that were supposed to be obvious. This has me wondering if there are similar cues we can apply to everyday life to help us not miss the obvious. Here are some thoughts based on my classroom experience:

• Repetition – if something is said more than once, odds are it is important. If it is not important to us now, it should become important given that someone else is taking the time to bring it up multiple times. Furthermore, if something happens more than once, it is probably worthy of note and/or action.
• Relevance – I wonder how many times we have glanced over something that is directly applicable to us, but we failed to see it. One thing I have learned so far from my Learning 365 project is that there are more relevant things around us than we realize.
• Revelation – another thing I fear is that there are times that things are intentionally revealed by others that I should pay attention to and don’t. Regardless of the source of the revelation, we should probably be careful to not write it off so quickly.

~ John