I always thought the saying “I can’t see the forest for the trees” wasn’t always a good way to observe life, and today I’m convinced. Lemme explain that. Around the nation, people have somehow been convinced that Libya deserves to be invaded by European interests due to civil strife; civil meaning a rife between neighbors. Not neighboring countries, but neighbors, period.
People who agree with this invasion based on surface observation are so overwhelmed by the forest itself that seeing each individual tree as an individual tree is too much for their brains to absorb. As a matter of fact, they’re so overwhelmed, they’ve never been down among the trees, preferring their view from the sky and reveling in it because, to them, it’s the only view that matters.
These people are seeing the forest, clearly, but they’re not seeing the trees. To take it a step further, these trees which they miss that make up the forest—which could not exist without them and still be called a forest—are comparable to the true interests of these invading countries, which they also miss in their ignorantly arrogant observations and conclusions that the forest contains entirely too many trees and it just makes sense to see them as a whole and not attempt to differentiate between trees.
So, they’re missing the tree with poison ivy running up from its root. They’re missing the trees bearing fruit and those offering a safe haven for the animals. But most of all—revisiting the first missed element—they’re missing those with that huge, hairy poison ivy root crawling seemingly innocuously up the tree, reaching, reaching for the sun and hoping like hell somebody passes by and accidentally touches it or breathes in its toxins.
And that’s why when you already KNOW you’re in the forest, you have to examine the trees; otherwise, you’ll miss the most important elements. Elements that could spell disaster for an unsuspecting person. Or an aerial viewer. Or a nation.
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