Under a bustling bridge sat three scrawny mice.

They remained stone still, while their stomaches rumbled, for a blindfold covered their eyes.

Each blindfold represented a unique kind of blindness limiting them from a full stomach.

The first was problem blindness. Instead of looking to solutions or preventative measures a problem were integrated into everyday life: accepted, normalized. This typically happened after a mouse had burrowed into a new environment, established a lay of the land, and scouted any treacherous cohabitants.

The good news was that escaping from problem blindness wasn’t impossible. It began with a shock of awareness that you’ve treated the abnormal as normal. An episode of Tom & Jerry often did the trick.

The second was a lack of ownership. It’s simply not my problem. The increasing toxic waste in the fields, piles of moldy inedible cheese, not a problem I created.

Instead one had to look at those challenges knowing they could be the mouse to fix it, not because it’s demanded of them but because they could, and because it’s worth fixing.

The third was tunneling. Mice love to tunnel. It’s in their blood, instincts, a ingrained drive. But it can be a dangerous pursuit. Often a result of juggling a lot of problems feeling like flight or fight and settling on tunnel vision as a way of giving up. No long-term planning, no strategic prioritization, simply short-term, reactive thinking.

The mice who didn’t tunnel had seen stories like Evan’s and knew they needed to constantly observe, stay on their toes and take in their environment.

As the mice grew increasingly hungry they wondered, when had they lost their sight?

Photo by Enrico Da Prato on Unsplash.