Hidden In Plain Sight, Our Vulnerabilities Lurk

The brave choice of the middle road.

Nothing is harder to see than what hides in plain sight. I wrote before about my passion for spot-the-seven-differences puzzles when I was a child; my grandad would tell me the last one was always the hardest, and it took me years to realise that the most arduous part of the task would vary from person to person. We all have distinct blindspots and strengths, which make us vulnerable and resistant to diverse elements of the human experience.

Indeed, what is right under our noses often takes us longer to notice and appreciate. When solving a Wordle puzzle, I often struggle the most with words that contain duplicate letters. Similarly, understanding an aspect of reality is frequently a trap, for we may ignore one or more of its sides and the shadows it may project depending on where the light shines from. For instance, in software development, refactoring a couple of functions can easily lead to much cleaner and simplified code but break a part of the application we didn’t even consider as reliant on the section of the programme we affected.

It is tempting to accept that the wisest course of action is taking no action. Fortunately, we don’t need to be especially wise to understand that pausing to consider every possible combination and consequence will…