I came across this picture while going through some boxes.
It shows me nearing the finish line of a 3.5 kilometer run in NYC. It was taken in the early 80’s.
I was in pretty good shape back then, wouldn’t you agree?
Notice how tired the other runners in the picture appear to be. Yet, there I am, chugging along, looking as fresh as when the run started.
The funny thing about this picture is that I was just as tired as many of the others. Fortunately, I caught a glimpse of my friends and their cameras among the crowd up ahead, so I picked up the pace just as this photo was snapped.
This is a reminder that we can’t believe everything that we see.
Recent events have highlighted the inability of the eyes to detect the incongruities that exist between the things we see and the realities that become apparent upon further examination. They include:
- The perception of Tiger as the perfect ad man;
- The Balloon Boy fiasco;
- The toppled belief in the inherent superiority of foreign cars.
One would think that people would have developed a healthy skepticism by now.
I don’t believe that they have.
The many victims left in the wake of Bernie Madoff’s extended scam reinforce this notion. But deception often occurs on a much smaller scale. I often see stories on television of people who have been duped in innumerable ways. Most, if not all, of the scams are concocted upon a single premise – people believe what they see.
I hope that, someday soon, common sense becomes less uncommon, so that scammers can go broke from a dearth of customers.
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Ray } – 
