Can’t see the forest for the trees.
It’s possible to lose sight of ultimate goals by focusing on distractions. Has is happened to you? Is it a regular occurrence in your life?
Anyone who’s been around me awhile knows I’ve always had trouble with my attention span. I’m the kind of person who can be watching a TV or streaming series I really enjoy, and then immediately forget what I was watching when a commercial break interrupts. I can get lost in my thoughts if I let them run unrestrained.
When I was medically diagnosed with adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – in my late 30s, having gone to the doctor upon the insistence of both my (first) wife and my employer – my doctor begin trying different medications to see if anything helped to have better focus and productivity. It was hit and miss, like lots of things, but when we finally landed on something he thought was working, we began to try to fine tune dosage.
During one office visit, with my dosage set at two pills per day – an average dosage – the doctor told me he’d been working with adult ADHD patients for 30 years or more. In all that time, he told me he’d seen maybe four or five people who would have needed five pills per day to not have any noticeable symptoms of ADHD. “You’re one of those.”
I asked, “You’re going to put me on five pills a day?” “No!” he responded. “But that’s what it would take for you.”
We stuck with the two.
My (second/current/final) wife gets distracted more easily than I do. I wonder how many pills she’d need.
In spite of – or maybe because of – my ability to be easily distracted, I can hyper-focus on things. I can remember in great detail the layout of a two-storey house I used to live in, down to what toys my kids left on the floor that particular day. But some times I’d have to think very hard to remember what I did with the object I was just holding, or what I was looking for in the toolbox.
I can lose sight of ultimate goals by focusing on minutiae. I can get caught up in writing a particular paragraph, drawing a particular item, organizing a single drawer … and lose sight of the story’s overall plot, of the intended completed drawing, of the dresser as a whole.
I love Jesus. He gave me salvation because he knew I needed it. I can spend hours caught up in how wonderful he is and how blessed I am and in all the cool and interesting things about God and the Bible. I can focus on how language is used in Scripture, and how events fit into the history of God’s people and all the ins and outs of trying to understand exactly what God wants for us today … that I completely lose sight of what God wants for us today. Of what God wants for me today – to be faithful to him, obedient to him, being salt and light in a world that needs to taste and see that God is good, in a world that desperately longs to see light, not at the end of a tunnel, but light shining into their spirits and lives.
Forest for the trees.
We can focus on making sure our children have clothes to wear, food to eat, a roof over their heads, that they get to practice and school on time, that they have fun and as much of the latest cool stuff we can get for them. We can focus on teaching them to work hard and play hard and love one another and be respectful, helpful and responsible.
We can do all these good things and lose sight of the fact that we need to be raising them for a purpose – to serve God and others, beginning today.
Focus on the trees, sure. Trim what needs trimming, water and fertilize what needs it, pick the fruit and plant the seedlings.
But don’t lose sight of the forest in the process.
Brett Campbell can be reached at ChunkyBrett@mail.com.
