CAN YOU TRUST WHAT YOU SEE?
April 19, 2006
BE HAPPY ZONE
By Lionel Ketchian

Count the "F's" in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...

How many do you see? - 3?
You are wrong because there are 6! I am not kidding you. Read it again, this is not a joke.
The reasoning behind it will really amaze you. It seems the brain cannot process "OF." Is this incredible or what? Go back and look again! Anyone who counts three "F's" is normal, and four is quite rare. You can try it with your friends and see how they do.

At our last Happiness Club meeting I printed these words in large black type on a white board. We had about 30 people at the meeting who saw 3 F's in the above work. One person said they saw 4 F's. I told them there were 6 - F's and they still did not see. I had to show them the three F's that were in the word "OF." Thirty people were truly amazed. They asked how it was possible to miss seeing the F's. I told them that our brain couldn't process the word "OF."

Don't you think it is amazing that we can't see the letter "F,"? Here it is right out in plain sight, right before your very eyes in black and white and yet you can't see it. Think about this for a moment. If you can't see something that is plainly in front of you than you actually don't see everything you think you are looking for.

Psychology calls this phenomenon a "schetoma," or a blind spot. If we have a blind spot when we look for something we will have trouble recognizing it when we see it. Lets say for example that you are asked to go to the kitchen, open the cabinet above the stove and get the bowl of sugar on the second shelf. So you go to the kitchen, open the cabinet above the stove and look at the second shelf so you can find the bowl of sugar. You look for it and finally after a minute you give up and say, "I looked for it and it was not there." In the meantime someone comes along and points to the sugar bowl sitting on the second shelf right in front of your eyes. How come you did not see it? You were looking for it, it was there, you set your eyes on it and yet you could not locate it.

Now imagine for a moment that you are unhappy and you can't see how you can be happy. Maybe the real reason for being unhappy is that you have a schetoma, or a blind spot to happiness. It is possible that you are not seeing the good reasons for you to be happy and that you have become thoroughly blind to being happy. Are we blind to happiness as a society? It may be true that being happy may require us to "see," with the eyes of happiness. In other words, we may need to know we can see happiness, in order to really see what has been there all along.

Are we going to continue to be blind to our happiness? Life is very short and happiness is very important. It is time to really SEE what happiness can do for us. Even if you can't see happiness, just start using happiness and then you will see it for yourself. Maybe the problem is that we see only unhappiness and that blinds us to the happiness that is there for us to see and enjoy. Robert Louis Stevenson wisely advised us, "When we look into the long avenue of the future, and see the good there is for each one of us to do, we realize, after all, what a beautiful thing it is to work, and to live, and to be happy."

Making the Happiness Decision can help remove the schetoma once and for all, that we seem to have toward being happy. If you don't decide to be happy, then you will decrease your chances of removing the unhappiness blind spot. It might be said that unhappiness is nothing more than societal schetoma, or a societal blind spot, a refusal to see happiness. Let's not be blind to one of life's most significant gifts. The gift of happiness may give us superior insight. The only way to really see yourself being happy, is to be happy and then you can see happiness for yourself and in yourself.

Here in Connecticut, our next Smiling Single Seniors Happiness Club meeting will be a presentation called: "Happiness Connections," by Lionel Ketchian. The meeting will be on Monday, April 24th, from 7:00 - 8:30 PM at the Westport Public Library at: Arnold Bernhard Plaza, 20 Jesup Road, Westport, CT 06880. Stacy Enyeart is the group facilitator. Admission is free, for further information call Lionel Ketchian at 203 258-7777. Meet some wonderful people using happiness in their lives. Stay happy and healthy - get well connected.

Lionel Ketchian is the founder of the Happiness Club and can be reached at PrintLRK@aol.com. The Web site is www.happinessclub.com.