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Chasing Unicorns: Chapter 3, Dominatrix Theory, Part 4

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Tap cover, to read.

This is the latest installation of a 27-part series, featuring my book, Chasing Unicorns. To read the previous installation, CLICK THIS LINK. For the next post in this series, CLICK THIS LINK. To start at the beginning, CLICK THIS LINK. To read the entire book at once, tap the book cover. Thanks for reading!

RECAP: The ABC’s of focus were spelled out alphabetically to us yesterday, where we learned that your awareness can continuously shift back to one particular stimulus, while scanning all other stimuli in your environment. This places that one particular stimulus into your foreground awareness, while kicking everything else into your background awareness. I hope you haven’t zoned out yet, but if you have, I’m going to wake you up with a practical joke . . .

Dominatrix Theory, Part 4

Practical Joke Theory

I estimate that less than 1% of everything in your environment is in your foreground awareness, while more than 99% exists in the background. And yet your mind spends much more than 1% of its time with your awareness shifted to your foreground awareness. In fact there are times when you can become so engrossed with your focus on something, that more than 99% of the time your awareness is shifting to the narrow array of things in the foreground, and less than 1% of the time is it shifting to the vast array of things in the background. Wow, talk about your class warfare. It’s like the tiny minority of rich just keeps getting richer, while the vast majority of poor just keeps getting poorer.

Do these numbers crunch? Like salty pretzels fresh from the supermarket, my friend. I’ll show you:

Now keep in mind that when I speak of “environment,” I mean anything and everything your mind can be aware of at this moment. That includes mental activity, such as thoughts and emotions. And it includes physical feelings, and stuff going on within you and around you that you can see and hear, and whatever else you can be aware of.

With all the billions of things in your environment that you can be aware of at any given time, there are many things available that can be part of the 1%. After all, 1% of one billion is ten million. So your awareness can be shifting around amongst ten million things in your foreground, 99% of the time, and only foray into the 990 million things in your background about 1% of the time (assuming that there are exactly one billion things in your environment).

When this occurs a perfect scenario is established for a practical joke. If you are so engrossed with focusing on one narrow aspect of your environment, you’re paying very little attention to anything else. This makes it real easy for someone to sneak up from behind and scare the living bejesus out of you. And real easy for you to respond with a quick spinning karate kick to the nuts.

That’s why I don’t pull this trick on people. But I do pull it on cats. When I see a cat totally engrossed on, let’s say, a mouse under a couch, I’ll sneak up and grab it from behind. Some cats have been known to leap about ten feet into the air after I’ve done this. I know it’s lame and sophomoric, and I always feel sorry for the feline later. But geez, it’s just so funny to see them jump so high. I can’t help myself.

For this reason I call this theory, Practical Joke Theory. Practical Joke Theory states: The more focused your awareness is, the less background awareness you have. And therefore the easier it is for some lout you’re barely aware of in your background, to pull a practical joke on you.

[Getting tired of all this discussion about awareness? Don’t worry, tomorrow you’re going to become aware of just how little awareness there is to go around. And so the discussion must end soon. Thank God.]

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Categories: books, Series (Books): Chasing Unicorns

42 replies »

  1. Pingback: Chasing Unicorns: Chapter 3, Dominatrix Theory, Part 3 – Chasing Unicorns
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  6. But don’t we all still want to be “in the zone”? I’ve always thought of as the 1% of our awareness that we’d like to be able to concentrate on 99% of the time. Isn’t that where we should be our most productive? I’d guess most of us are lucky to be there 50% of the time and I know that “science” has lately proven the inefficiency of trying to multitask. Thank goodness for the latter. Now we women don’t have to pretend that we can do or have it all. But wait, Miss Oprah already told us that when she said we can have it all just not all at the same time!

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  7. Being “in the zone” is okay, I guess, but I don’t think it’s everything. Unique experiences (unicorns) follow no rules. There’s no formula that works consistently over time. Being out of the zone can be a lot of fun when you’ve been in the zone for too long. Who cares about being at our most productive? Some productive people live miserable lives. Better to focus on enjoying life, whether we’re being productive or not, in my opinion.

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