Keep Your Eye on Your Own Bobber
It’s a summer Friday afternoon. Me, and a highway full of fellow travelers, are on 94 West, heading out of the city and heading to lake country. Traffic is crawling – I could get out and walk faster, or at least that is what I am saying to myself. Creeping, creeping – 30 minutes of frustration. I’m thinking summer road construction. Rationalizing, “the roads need to be repaired sometime….,” and then I see it. Flashing lights ahead – a tow truck. Shoulder shrug, heavy sigh. Another 2-3 minutes of creeping and we’re off – immediately up to 65 mph, then 70 and my cruise control setting of 75. Yep – all of that for a gawker slowdown! A stalled car and a tow truck! Not a gnarled mess of strewn metal, firemen with their jaws of life. Nope – a stalled car and tow truck. Ugh! Everyone needing to get a glimpse of someone else’s woes, their misery.
Thoughts? Do you share my gawker slowdown angst? Why the need to experience someone else’s misfortune? I find it interesting how one little glance ripples downstream, affecting others, the backup growing as the braking cascades like a wave. I would be amiss without admitting I glanced too; but in my frustration I am “holier than thou,” directing my ire forward, to those who went before me, and choosing to ignore the affects of my braking on the unfortunate behind me. Which takes me to the title, Keep Your Eye on Your Own Bobber.
Last Friday, my sister, cousin and I volunteered to serve food at a music festival. The dinner crowd was building, all anxious to get a quick meal before the next music act started. Its fair to say that orders were being placed and served at a frantic pace. A frantic pace that resulted in a few misconstructed meals – pulled pork instead of brisket, a burger ON a bun, a taco WITH tomatoes. You get the picture – nothing life critical, nothing not easily corrected. In my scurrying, out of the corner of my eye, I notice a customer questioning an error with his order and I asked if I could help, only to be hit with the ol’ “Keep Your Eye on Your Own Bobber.” To be honest, the reciter was correct – this was not my issue, I had my own tasks at hand. All would be better off if I just focused on my “job.” To be honest, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the comment stung a bit – no one wants to be corrected, much less corrected in public.
Keep Your Eye on Your Own Bobber takes me back to my first Tesla Model 3 driver-assist, autonomous driving experience, with this excerpt from the Model 3 blog post:
While driving, the display shows your car’s position in traffic along with the traffic around you. The display adds orange cones as it senses potential hazards – a tailgating car, a car too close to the lane dividing stripe. I can visualize the “self-driving” algorithm now in graphical form. The artificial intelligence, machine-learning algorithm that is being refined before the inevitable, autonomous driving. My take-away: while I was driving on a VERY busy 6 lane highway, the algorithm was only mapping 3 lanes: my lane and the 2 adjacent lanes. Genius. The algorithm isn’t DISTRACTED by what is uncontrollable and irrelevant for the task but FOCUSED on what is controllable and relevant! Gut-check time – in times of stress and anxiety, am I distracted by the uncontrollable OR focused on things I can control? Hmmm.
My question for you – do you keep your eye on your own bobber? Do you keep your focus on the things adjacent to you, focused on things that you can affect and that can affect you?