Beyond the Blindfold

By Vince Taylor and Susan M. Boyce

How often do we question our own assumptions?

Beyond the Blindfold is a must-read collection of essays from successful entrepreneur Vince Taylor that asks us to do just that. Through 52 highly engaging parables, Taylor shares the importance of reflecting on our actions and beliefs throughout adulthood.

Written over ten years of reflection, this book shares Taylor's own follies and mistakes alongside moments of growth and success. The result? Beyond the Blindfold provides down-to-earth insights into key principles often bypassed in the 21st century.

Topics include balancing work success with the warmth of home (in a chapter titled, "Emptying the Bucket"); the techniques of not judging others ("Lessons from the Dog Park"); how to handle—and not be consumed by—success ("One Mask, Two Faces); and becoming compelling to your audience, whether a team, a client or a party ("The Long and Short of Great Communication"), amongst others.  

Above all, readers of Beyond the Blindfold will understand more about harnessing the power of context throughout life milestones, even during tumultuous times. We can all live fuller, happier, more successful lives—all by acknowledging the lens through which we see the world. 

Keep this book on the bedside table, on the coffee table, in your glove compartment. Delve into these ideas time and again, when you need a pick-me-up or the advice of a wise friend.

Vince Taylor is a lifelong entrepreneur and principal of Pilothouse Real Estate. He lives with his family in Surrey, BC.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vince Taylor
• Release date: May 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781999278519

Book preview

Beyond the Blindfold: Harnessing the Secret Power of Context

If you like Garrison Keillor, but wish he thought more deeply about things, you’ll like Vince Taylor’s ornery, wise take on life … a pick-me-up to pick up when you need a dollop of tactical shrewdness in your day. Read a chapter a week for a year and you’ll be different!

Cogently written, this book plows the fields of the reader’s mind, turning up fresh soil to root new ways of looking into our beliefs and reactions to the world. Taylor’s premise is that our core context, the things that make us frame words and events to fit our beliefs, can be skewed; seeing clearly and interpreting accurately means dealing with the context shaping our interpretation of the world.

Moving through chapters organised by the four seasons, we go from Spring’s airy, entertaining views through to Winter, with its final, hard questions. I liked that there was no You should attitude in the book, just deeply thought observations that take the reader to the end of the examined life. Highly recommended.

~ Kay Vreeland, Author Coach

I must admit that I had a hard time getting into this book, and even after I got started it took me a while to follow what the author was trying to say. Interestingly, once I got caught up with the message I learned a lot about how communication happens. If you want to know how to think and act Beyond the Blindfold, as well as how to help others get beyond their own, read this book, you will be well rewarded. 

~ Mike Michelsen, Freelance Journalist

I have reviewed hundreds of books and am rarely at a loss for words. First let me say I highly recommend Beyond the Blindfold and second, the book was frustrating, funny, maddening, insightful and a deep dive into many personal topics that I wasn’t really prepared to deal with. While certainly philosophical, Shakespeare it is not; gritty and more like a street fight with your mind would be more accurate — all the while being extremely well researched, concise and thoughtful. The point is deceptively simple: we all look at day to day life through our own lens of correctness and, if you accept that premise, how can all points of view be correct? And if that’s true, then is each reader prepared to accept that their context may be flawed? Not easy, that’s for sure. I'm buying a copy for everyone in my family and definitely keeping a copy on the nightstand. A few laughs and even a few tears, I imagine I will be reading this book many more times in my life. 

~ Jordon B., Independent Reviewer

www.beyondtheblindfold.com

First Edition.

Copyright ©2020 Vince Taylor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief passages quoted by a reviewer in a newspaper or magazine. To perform any of the above is an infringement of copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-9992785-0-2 soft cover

ISBN 978-1-9992785-1-9 eBook

Book and cover formatting by First Choice Books.

Beyond the Blindfold: Harnessing the Secret Power of Context by Vince Taylor with Susan M Boyce

Contents

Dedications and Acknowledgments

Introduction — 52 Reasons Why Context Is King

SPRING

1. The Power of Context and Perspective

2. Being Fully Present — A Daily Mantra That Never Gets Easier

3. Lessons from the Dog Park: Thank You, Grandma

4. Free Stuff: Once Upon a Time I Got Something for Free, and Other Fairy Tales from My Childhood

5. I Try Not to Be Definitive, Unless I’m Definitely Certain

6. Be Specific If You Want To Be Taken Seriously — Part I

7. Kids Today Are Smarter Than Their Parents

8. The Long and Short of Great Communication

9. Arguing and Debating: Know the Rules Then Enjoy the Experience

10. Emptying the Bucket — Please Do That Outside

11. Dieting: Fact or fiction

12. Do Umbrellas Cause Rain? — A Challenging Adage

13. What Is the Probability of Luck?

14. How Are You?

15. How to Buy a Hat and the Power of Doing Nothing

SUMMER

16. Humor: It Feels Great To Laugh, But What’s So Funny?

17. The Mysteries of Friendship

18. Be Specific If You Want to be Taken Seriously — Part II

19. Regression Toward the Mean

20. Ideas: The Sparks of All Great Thinking

21. The But, The And, and The Ugly

22. What Is A Memory — And Is It Possible To Forget?

23. Karma: The Wild Merry-Go-Round of Fate or Whatever You Might Like to Call It

24. What Is the Value of A Vacation and What Am I Trying to Get Away From?

25. What, When and Wear

FALL

26. Education: The Real Story My Mother Never Told Me

27. Conventional Wisdom: Maybe Not So Wise

28. E=MC² — The Most Famous Math Equation That I Really Didn’t Understand

29. Loyalty: Misunderstood and Occasionally Wonderful

30. Success and Failure: One Mask With Two Faces

31. Solutions and Problem Solving

32. Doctors Are Some of My Favorite People — That I Don’t Want to See Very Often

33. When Does Ambition Become Compulsion?

34. Prohibition: The Seriously Dysfunctional Non-Solution

35. Empathy: Mankind’s Greatest Gift — I Think

36. Sorry, I Don’t Have Time

37. Two Things I Never Thought I’d Say About Recreational Sports

38. Voting Is Like Remembrance Day: Sometimes Confusing, Still the Right Thing to Do

WINTER

39. Which Came First, the Chicken or Global Warming?

40. Morality: A Man-made Concept

41. A Discussion About Honesty

42. All People Are Created Equally

43. Ain’t No Environmentalist. But I Do Wonder What Happens When There Is No More Away

44. Injury, Addiction, Legalization and the True Price of Freedom

45. Let’s Start A War For The Kids

46. The Mystery of Leadership

47. Life Beyond the Physical

48. Should I Automatically Trust Those in Positions of Power and Authority?

49. Borders, Fences and Other Money Well Wasted

50. Funerals: My Whole Life in 618 Seconds

51. Regrets: The Most Vibrant Threads In My Tapestry

52. Live Like You’re Dying — Just in Case

Dedications and

Acknowledgments

I never used to read this section: I sure do now.

Hundreds of people have been directly responsible for bringing this book to life. Many more have contributed in ways I may never be able to articulate. Their sage advice and many of their original ideas have become homogenous and may appear to be borrowed as my own — not intentionally. I hope some comfort will come from the best ideas of others living on in this way.

Throughout my life, I’ve had the amazing good fortune to be surrounded by intelligent, inspiring and motivated people who care for me deeply. Mother and fathers first for sure, aunts and uncles, great friends and the list goes on. Specifically though, my family who have borne the burden of my pontifications and hopefully derived some benefit as well. To Kathy, Joe and Ben, thank you most of all.

To the hundreds of others, I finally understand the difficulty in even finding a place to start. To Mike, Sue, Brian, Denise, Gordon, Alyssa, Robin, Dan, Courtenay, Mazell, Craig and Ken for taking the time to read each piece and offering honest feedback — even the kind I didn’t like. To the others unnamed, I will always be grateful.

Special thanks to Susan M Boyce, my collaborative associate. Over the past five years, she constantly reminded me that good writing isn’t about being understood, it’s about writing so you can’t be misunderstood. When I got preachy about a particularly favored sacred cow, she’d refer to me as Vicar Vince, or simply VV, a reminder that my readers deserve the respect they are due.

And finally, without Sylvia Taylor’s expert editing we might never have made it across the finish line.

To everyone who has been part of this decade-long journey and to the readers who are just beginning to explore the possibilities, I’d love to hear your thoughts, comments and insights. Send me a note to www.beyondtheblindfold.com and I promise to read and respond to each and every one. Happy reading.

Introduction — 52 Reasons Why Context Is King

Beyond the Blindfold began as a series of emails between a group of close friends — an exchange of ideas on complex topics like marriage, death, raising children and the day-to-day struggles to find meaning in our lives.

As the discussions intensified and were elevated beyond the superficial, I felt compelled to conduct real research and respond to the group in a voice that walked the razor-thin line between fact, opinion and my context of how the world should be.

Surprisingly, the harder I tried to make sense of things, the more it became clear that some of my most revered ideas and sentiments were long on emotion and short on reality.

Then it got worse.

The journey of writing this book has changed my beliefs on a million things, most of them involving ‘sacred cows’ like morality and addiction, global warming and the role of violence in amateur sport.

As I researched my way through this 10-year exploration, the process of writing a new piece would sometimes alter my thinking on an earlier one. At times it felt like an endless game of Snakes and Ladders or, as Churchill once described Russia, a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

With all that in mind, what is Context anyway, and why write a book about it?

Well, it’s because before I really understood context, I understood nothing. It’s that big a deal. To be brutally honest though, I struggled to share this information because why should anyone care what I think? After all, I’m not a therapist, a scientist, or even a Jesuit priest who might claim some sort of enlightenment — although enlightenment would be cool. Ultimately, after some internal battles, I was so moved by the power of what I had discovered that keeping it to myself became impossible.

Context to me is the most powerful, naturally occurring interruption of the conscious mind I have ever experienced. A neural concoction so influential that even the best and brightest suffer from incredible and inexplicable bias and, occasionally, even downright insanity.

The result is that now to consider my opinions ‘right’ and other opinions ‘wrong’ has become preposterous and embarrassing.

Imagine a typical car accident. A car goes through a yellow light and strikes a pedestrian. The pedestrian dies. Fact, not fiction, no context.

Now suppose the driver is Caucasian and the pedestrian is a young black child. On each of the four corners there is an eyewitness — two males, two females, each of a different age and ethnicity. The police arrive on scene to take statements from each of the four witnesses.

What I know for sure is that each person will interpret the facts through their own life experience: how and where they were raised, perhaps their level of income or education, the current political climate and, of course, the general bias towards birds of a feather.

This happens because no two people could ever have identical life experiences, and, therefore, it would not be possible for them to share an identical context. With events viewed through incongruent lenses, consensus becomes nearly impossible — on any topic, at any time — despite the facts being nearly indisputable.

And this is the hardest part:meaning is defined by context, which determines motive. I only wish those perfect words by Dr. David R. Hawkins were mine. If there was ever a more succinct sentence to help us make sense of things, I have yet to read it. He is saying that how I respond to any situation, my motive, is entirely dependent on my interpretation of the facts.

But wait, a fact is supposed to be a thing that is known to be consistent with objective reality and can be proven to be true with evidence, and yet I catch myself being so deeply entrenched in my own ideas about right or wrong, good or bad, that stepping beyond those ingrained biases is extremely difficult.

Crystalizing my thinking further, there are very few things in my life that are irrefutably true, where there is 100% consensus from all parties, all the time. Death, gravity and taxes, those kinds of things. If someone is dead, they are dead, 100% agreement, no further context needed. As to how or why they died, well, that’s a completely different conversation. So, to take the position that something is in fact true, requires extreme care.

So even with a pretty good grasp of context, does any of this make sense? Of course not. My motive should not be influenced by my interpretation of the facts, and I know for sure that it is.

So what to do…?

Some years ago, I travelled to the city of Arawa on the island of Bougainville near New Guinea. Arawa is a real place and yet unreal in so many ways. For me, the once thriving, very modern capital represented the dichotomy and incongruity that is much of my life.

After being ravaged by civil war, I found Arawa wasn’t easy to define. It was not specifically one thing or another, yet the people moved effortlessly between a number of very disparate realities and contexts.

One day when I was out walking, I came across a burned-out framework of what was once a Shell Oil gas station, the familiar yellow and red banner faded but discernable. A young man stood with his elbow resting atop the 50-gallon drum. In an apocalyptic kind of way, there was also a hand crank to dispense gasoline in small increments to passersby for their scooters, small boat engines and the like.

With what I thought was obvious irony, I asked the young man if he’d ever seen a real gas station with multiple pumps, air and water stations, maybe even a car wash.

No. He’d never heard of such a thing and gave me a dismissive look as if I was making up a tall tale about a place that could never exist. I thanked him for the chat and carried on.

Farther down the same road I saw a well-dressed man in an expensive suit talking on his cell phone. Standing next to him, under the same tree, was an equally well-dressed woman in a grass skirt and hand-fashioned top, bartering fresh coconuts for dried fish. Having just arrived from a distant village, money had no value to her — let alone a linen suit and a cell phone. Just inches from each other and yet worlds apart.

Whose reality was correct?

The unavoidable and uncomfortable question lay right in front of me. Have I always been prepared to seriously consider the thoughts and ideas of someone in a grass skirt, who I perceived as less sophisticated than my worldly self? I’m squirming as I write this because I know the answer, and I don’t like it.

And maybe even more remorseful, have I given too much weight and not enough scrutiny to the ideas and sentiments of those who I admired simply because they owned a fancy house or held a specious title? Yuck.

What I took away from that journey was another hard lesson about context. It’s such an easy, throw-away word, and yet infinitely powerful and intricate. On the long plane ride home, pretzel crumbs adorning my shirt, the conclusion was clear: nearly everything I ever believed about right and wrong, good and bad, was based on my current life experience, not necessarily fact.

I had a series of similar experiences when I visited South Africa during the apartheid days. As a young man arriving from what seemed like a galaxy far, far away, my world was turned upside down. I was violently confronted by deeply held cultural ideas that I certainly did not understand — yet had to acknowledge if I wanted to survive — literally. I share some of those crazy stories in a piece called The Morality and the Madness.

Socrates once said: An unexamined life is not worth living. Many of us have seen this bold statement and perhaps, like me, nodded knowingly without really knowing. It seemed appropriate to find out a bit more.

While Socrates lived one of the most significant and eclectic lives of all time, it was his love of wisdom that was his most important pursuit above all else. He sought wisdom through questioning and logical argument and made the point that a life without philosophy — an unexamined life — was not worth living.

As it turned out though, Socrates ended up on trial for impiety, a fancy word for sacrilege, as it related to his disrespect of the gods of ancient Greece. There followed a second charge of corrupting the youth with his philosophical ideas. He was sentenced to death for his nouveau notions and a few sips of hemlock tea later, that was the untimely end of Mr. S.

With Socrates’ inspiration, the foundation of Beyond the Blindfold was the pursuit of correct, unbiased knowledge — above all else — sacrilege or not. Just don’t offer me any tea please…

So what does it all mean to you the reader? What I hope you get out of this book is a thorough and honest examination of why we disagree, not so much how to fix it. There are many books and many experts who can help with how to fix things: I’ve become more interested in why we have the problem in the first place.

I believe now that the fastest road to a useful and long-lasting compromise is making an effort to understand our differences — instead of an immediate and sometimes shallow, negotiated consensus. I have not always felt that way.

To wrap it all up, my ideas have value and your ideas have value — and yet in the real world, decisions have to be made and one person will not always get what they want or feel they deserve.

If it’s me who loses out, will my context and logic-loop change to accept the new reality, or will I retreat and hide behind my closely held bias and beliefs at any cost? More importantly, will I choose to adopt outcomes that I may not like, with an open mind and a sincere commitment to learn more about why I feel the way I feel?

That last question is the gauntlet I have thrown down for myself. It is my examination and my journey. It’s not a straight path because sometimes, even after I make a sincere effort to see another side of things, I still think I’m right. A work in progress.

The book is divided neatly into four seasonal sections, each representing a metaphor of complexity.

Beginning with Spring, you’ll find some light and airy pieces to ease into the cadence of the essays. By Summer and Fall, I hope you’re fully invested so that in the Winter section, you’re eager to tackle some dark and brooding topics — ideas and concepts without easy answers, ideas that may chill you to the bone. Let’s Start A War For the Kids comes to mind…

As you progress, I hope you’ll find yourself confronting your own ‘sacred cows’ in a whole new way — vicariously through my struggles. I’ve found it’s much more fun sometimes to see our own issues through another’s window: reality TV in literary form.

Regardless of the order you choose to read, I invite you to go on your own exploration, digesting all 52 essays slowly. If the process of writing them was any indication, roaring through, cover to cover, may result in too much brain-strain.

In conclusion, what this book is not is a self-help, do-as-I-say guide. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. The armor plating of my contextual shield protects my feelings, and yours, and allows a free flow of ideas and opinions since consensus is not the goal. We are all winners as my grade two teacher used to say.

Finally, I will make you one promise. If you read this book slowly from cover to cover, giving it the time needed to process the information, you may never look at any kind of confrontation in the same way again. Not with your kids, your spouse, your boss or even yourself. I know that’s a big promise — at least it is from my context anyway.

And so the voyage begins. Jump on board!

v

Section 1

SPRING

Light and Airy

Thoughts and Ideas

To Get Warmed Up

I

The Power of Context and Perspective

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

~ George Carlin

Without a doubt , this is my very favorite George Carlin quote. All the folly, foolishness and ridiculous things I’ve said and done in my entire life, neatly wrapped up in only 22 words.

While Carlin made the rest of the story funny, under the humor of this beautiful declaration lurks a very serious matter, because it’s a poignant illustration about the folly of opinion and, more importantly, about the power of context. Seems a fitting place to start this book.

So what does it mean to me? Essentially it means that I’m right and you’re wrong… period. It means my personal context confirms my point of view to the exclusion of all others, so my opinions are always correct. And, should you not believe me, I’ll find others of like mind to support my position at almost any cost.

And yet, would I dare make such a declarative statement in front of my friends, family or colleagues? Would I ever be brash enough to suggest, with a perfectly straight face, that I’m always right? I couldn’t. And yet I do. I just do it in other ways.

Continuing the example of driving, I’ve been annoyed many times by some moron who can’t even seem to go the speed limit or some crazy driver travelling way too fast for road conditions. Obviously, I’m driving at the correct speed (always), and everyone else is making the road unsafe.

And can you believe this? Sometimes I yell at those other drivers — even though they can’t possibly hear me. What an odd thing to do. I’ve even done this with passengers in my car... clearly with the intention of getting the passenger to agree with my point of view. That guy’s an idiot… right? Right? As I wait for an approving glance from the co-pilot.

It’s bad enough I’m totally sold on my own context being correct, but trying to sell others on it is embarrassing at the very least. And it gets worse. Beyond driving a car, is it possible that I sometimes believe my version of the truth, any truth, is the only correct perspective?

Do I really believe other people’s chosen speeds, ideas, thoughts, dreams, plans or religions are, by their own definition, incorrect? That’s scary… especially since I am talking about myself.

I’m cringing and crimson as I recall the awful feeling of shouting at someone to hurry through the crosswalk before realizing they had a prosthetic leg. Or the soul-scorching moment when I wondered contemptuously, Who would wear a hat like that in the summertime? only to see the bald head of a chemo patient revealed moments later.

In those agonizing seconds, my context about average walking speed and the fashionability of summer hats was crushed, pulverized and destroyed — for the better.

And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significance in the factual is wisdom.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

So what to do? Ever so slowly, my judgment in these matters has unfolded like a crumpled piece of paper. While I work to smooth out the creases, to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, I’ve come to believe there must be some reason for another person’s point of view. And when I can’t think of one, I’ve sometimes taken the extraordinary step of making up a fictitious one.

For example, it makes sense that an inexperienced driver might drive more slowly — which is a good thing. So, when someone is really slowing me down on the road, I try to imagine they are in that brand-new, more cautious driver category.

Alternatively, professional drivers might drive more quickly, darting in and out of the lanes because they have the skills — which makes sense as well. So, rather than yell into my windshield for the pros to slow down or the kids to speed up, instead I now calmly wish I had the expertise to handle a car with such skill or try to remember what it was like when I was