A good euphemism for short-sightedness.

“I’ve been busy.” That’s a good euphemism to explain short-sighted.

We leave ourselves off the hook often with that line when we don’t think ahead, or drop care in some other aspect of our life like health or family.

It happens to me fairly often, but never in the places I’m thinking of, which is why it happens in the first place. A mind moving quickly must know its course or else it will fly by the turns it needs to make. While busy, a swift but relaxed pace is appropriate to alleviate the short-sightedness and enable us to work efficiently towards goals, while not being short-sighted in other endeavors.

While it is hard to give an example of this for family, it has some easy analogies for tasks. Imagine you are working feverishly to close the biggest deal of your life. You realize you are tremendously parched from not even stopping for some water for hours on end. That is your first short-sightedness, ignoring your physiological needs. On the way downstairs, from the office to the kitchen, there is an office trash bin you see overflowing that you ignore. On your way back, there is a pile of laundry on the ground that you walk by instead of dropping in the hamper on the way by your room and back to your office. Missing both are short-sighted, and start to create all that “business” we so often tout. Each one could have been done already, but short-sightedness and tunnel vision set in and we began to see only one task as worth completing.

Short-sightedness, not busyness should be what we stay on the lookout for. Vigilant to keep it away. However, a partner is needed for this more often than not, and even that is a tricky endeavor to not come off insulting.