A Test I Failed That Opened My Eyes

//TRANSCRIPT//

I want to let you in on a little secret about me.

Now everybody knows this. I'll tell you in a minute, but first, a story.

I signed up to go in the army to become a Green Beret. That in itself was, as you can imagine, a bit of an anxious time, difficult time, right? You have this dream, you want to do this thing. And this is a giant bureaucracy. Just because you want it doesn't mean you can have it.

Part of the process is checking if the job is available and if you're smart enough. You take an aptitude test, and then you sign a contract and go in. Part of that process is getting a physical, though. You have to be physically fit. They obviously want to make sure that anybody who the government's going to spend a ton of money on to go into the military can do it.

What I Didn’t Know

I took a physical, and I failed that physical to become an SF guy to go into this program. They said no. Why'd they say no? Well, turns out there is a vision test that you take. You've probably taken this. It was created by Dr. Ishihara, a Japanese guy back in the early 1900s. It's that color test, the one with the circle where you look at it and they tell you to tell you what number it is. There's a bunch of dots inside of it.

I can't do that one. Just can't do it. Period. Full stop. And I failed it. They said, "Sorry, can't do it. Colorblind. Can't be an SF guy."

Where There Is A Will, There Is A Waiver

The good news is there's another motto in the military, which is "where there's a will, there's a waiver." And there is another option here. They really only care about colors that matter in combat, and those are red and green. So another guy, an American guy this time, Dr. Farnsworth, created a separate test. This test tests your ability to see red and green. Red and green is what matters in combat - I think it's because of looking at stuff under red lens and maps and stuff like that. But anyways, I passed that and the rest is history, I'm in.

Up until that moment, I didn't know that I was colorblind. Well, slight color deficiency. I have a difficult time telling blue from black, dark purple from blue, those kind of things. I have to ask friends to tell me, "Is this black? Is this blue? Do these pants match?" I've even worn the wrong pair of shoes to a medium before - one black, one brown. Kind of embarrassing, but I'm too old to be embarrassed at this point.

My Blindspots

I tell you this story because up until that moment, I had a pretty big blind spot as it relates to color. And it often takes some kind of outside intervention to help you see where you don't see correctly. The older I get, the more I like these. They're absolutely painful when you find them.

But the reason we want to find our blind spots is because our blind spots keep us from seeing reality, from seeing the truth, from operating in what is the real world, not our version of it. And those blind spots come in many forms. In my case, in this situation, slight color deficiency, but they come in the form of biases, stories, stereotypes, pick a thing.

We should be looking for our blind spots. And when friends try to bring them to us and tell us about it, we should be thankful, we should be grateful. Not all feedback is true or helpful, but sometimes it is. You should be on a quest to find your blind spots because as we remove them, it enables us to operate in reality.

Anyways, that's my story. Slight color deficiency. Thank you, Dr. Farnsworth. We appreciate that test. And that's it.

Have a good day. Be good.

Kelly