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Idiom: The elephant in the room
We need to discuss the elephant in the room.
Before we do, though, I have a request.
I want you to visit the zoo and check out the elephant exhibit.
It’s probably been a while since you did that but do it.
Get as close as you safely can and look at them.
Elephants are big and smelly.
Heck, their poop is round and as big as Canadian bowling balls.
You know what I mean, five-pin bowling.
Check it out here if you want – not the poop, five-pin bowling.
If you want to check out the poop, go to the zoo.
See, now you got me all distracted again.
I’ve gone off on another tangent.
When you go to the zoo, you’ll learn that it is tough to ignore an elephant.
You can smell them before you see them.
It’s impossible to say you didn’t notice them.
However, that said, people do a fantastic job of ignoring the elephant in the room each day of our lives.
That means people are very good at ignoring obvious and complex problems.
Humans are born procrastinators.
If anything is complicated, we’d rather do it tomorrow.
If it is challenging in any way, we’d rather leave it to someone else to do.
Our procrastination doesn’t start with the big stuff.
Procrastination begins with the little stuff.
First, we ignore the little things.
Then, the little things gradually grow to become the elephant in the room.
If you want an example, let’s take paperwork.
Everyone has to do paperwork of one kind or another.
Paperwork includes everything from paying bills (we all do that) to writing a doctoral thesis.
Most people dislike doing paperwork, so we delay doing it.
One day, that paperwork will be due.
As the date gets closer, the elephant becomes bigger.
We can ignore it only so long, and then one day, the elephant in the room we have ignored for so long rolls over and crushes us.
Don’t overlook the elephant in the room.
Deal with situations promptly because if the elephant in the room wants to roll over, you can’t stop it.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 77.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.