Myopia is real. I remember when we had this little Belarusian stay at our house and I was intently working on a drawing. I was working on the eyes. The shading was just right, I captured the light pretty well. But then I held it at arms length and the little Belarusian said "troll". I had drawn Sloth from The Goonies. The eyes didn't line up. The proportions were all off. But boy did he have the prettiest eyes. I had gotten so lost in the details that I never saw the big picture.
Life is like that all the time. We live nose to nose with our problems. Eyes to crooked eyes.
Well, I was standing in the shower thinking, and I thought about a similar problem. Staring straight at something but never seeing it. I thought there must be a word for that. Down the rabbit hole.
Semantic Satiation
The word is meaningless. Like roads. This most recently happened to me with the word commerce (for obvious reasons if you've read my about). Not quite what I was looking for.
Gestaltzerfall
Kind of like semantic satiation but for real physical objects. I have to admit, I am more confused after reading that wiki than I was beforehand. (Is there a word for that?) Is confusion the seed of knowledge?
Scotoma
Scotoma is the not so proverbial blind spot. I literally, (literally), just had this experience while looking for a toggle in my eCommerce platform. This sounds like what I am looking for except the blind spot is front and center - not on the periphery. Maybe the real blind spot isn’t in our vision—it’s in the way we think we’re seeing clearly?
Like Through A Looking Glass
The chessboard is a mirror. The jabberwocky does not fear the vorpal blade. You can see real far but you can't see wide. Reverse myopia. You Can't See What's Not There. In summation, up is down, left is right, war is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength - cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria The closer we stare, the less we see—until the obvious vanishes into the familiar, hiding in plain sight.