Jack Boss Coaching

Among the several intellectual waves I’m surfing now, the one about how we deploy a vast bank of past data to understand and react to current situations has gotten the most airplay so far.  It was on my mind this weekend when I was on a long run far from home.  The shoulders of the roads were non-existence, the footing, often treacherous, and the traffic, heavy.  My attention was focused on my footfalls without much exception and rarely did anything register in my peripheral vision.  I knew that I was taking in far more visual data than I was really processing, and was marveling at the efficacy of the filter that allowed me to allocate my attention where it was needed.

One of the very few things that caught my attention was a long, black cable lying in the street that I initially mistook for a snake.  Within a split second of asking the internal question, “was that a snake,” I turned my head and tested the better view of the impression from my peripheral vision against all known templates for snakes–black snakes, moving snakes, road-kill snakes, etc.  It only took a fraction of a second to ascertain that none fit.  While I could recognize the resemblance that caught my eye to begin with, it was clearly something like a cable or a large belt from a vehicle engine.

It made me wonder at what pierced the filter on my attention: not the many other branches, leaves, litter, rocks or bits of engine detritus that I passed.  The snake was different…animate, potentially dangerous, predatory, uncommon.   It tripped some primal alarm system, taking the attention that was protecting my ankles from a bad sprain to check out something that could be potentially more hazardous.

This was a couple of days ago, and though I thought a great deal about this on the run, I was uncertain whether it deserved a blog entry.  Yesterday, however, I was riding my bike and saw a long, brown seed pod in the road.  It was in my path and I had to swerved to miss it.  It looks like a snake, I thought, but corrected for the mistake I’d made on the run and dismissed the idea, marveling at how easy it was to let your imagination get the best of you.  I had adjusted, not letting the past or the primitive fears of my neolithic ancestors get the best of me. I had changed and not been a prisoner to past behavior patterns.

When I rode by it, I saw that it was a small rattlesnack.