Selective Seeing

You have heard of selective hearing where one listens only the good things, but have you heard of selective seeing?

Selective seeing is much like what Conflict Management studies called avoidance. Avoidance is not about closing an eye to things, but it's about not seeing what you don't wish to see. Given the change in our nation state's cleanliness and the people living in the country with inconsiderate behaviors, ungraceful acts, it pains my heart at times to see things I don't see when I was still in my youth.

Today, just about everywhere in Singapore, and especially in public fields and on pedestrian sidewalks, we can see debris and litter, spats of phlegm and saliva, inconsiderate acts of cycling without considerations for pedestrians, and more. If you are like me always bothered by such uncultured 'gracefulness', then you must learn to see things selectively. When seeing tissue papers, cans, bottles and other types of litter on the grass and sidewalks, just look around and see the beigger surroundings of nature, the flowers and the trees, the chirping birds and moving leaves, and breath in the fresh air if there is any. Minimize your focus on the unpleasant, such as the debris and the phlegm, and keep calm in the face of uncultured acts of spitting and littering.

Sounds like escapism you may think, and maybe you are right, but if that can keep a person's heartbeat rate down, it is worth it. There is no reason for us to suffer a heart attack for acts performed by others. Like selective hearing where we can choose to hear only the good stuff, selective seeing allows us to see only the good stuff, so we can calm our hearts.

Alternatively, if you prefer, you can play the hero and right the wrong by complaining through the media, the town councils and the community development councils, but these usually end up as a waste of time because things are unlikely going to improve with such complains. I've tried, I've been promised, and sometimes after years, the very thing I've complained about has been theoretically 'solved' with no improvement.

Take for example the cycling issue. I've written in the papers, and the good news was they will be extending sidewalks to cater for both cyclists and pedestrians. So I waited and after 1-2 years it was complete, but at all the wrong places. The main narrow sidewalk under the track of the MRT is where most cyclists-pedestrians have accidents, but the completion of project has been celebrated, but the problem persist and is not fixed for the main sidewalk, although every other sidewalks with hardly any problem have been fixed.

This is truly our country, this is indeed our land.