Have you ever looked at a huge tree that’s so beautiful on one side, but when you walk around it, there’s a place that’s rotting from the inside out? It looks fine from the road, but the side facing the woodsy-unknown is falling apart.

It will soon die. The entire tree, not just the back side.

If you never walk around the tree to discover what’s happening from another perspective, you will continue to ignore it until it falls into your pristine, well-kept path and causes you problems.

So you chop it up, wipe away the debris, and move on. No questions asked. It’s one tree.

Then it happens again and again and again, and it starts happening to younger trees, and you start to worry. What is going on? By then it’s too late. The disease has spread and infected the entire forest.

Can you see it now? You have been so focused on individual trees, finding the ones that suit your style, ignoring the rest. As long as they aren’t in your neighborhood, it’s not a problem.

But you’ve missed the forest for the trees.