We deal with fire better than we deal with melting glaciers.

And it makes sense that our antennae are tuned for urgent crises. Without that bias, we wouldn’t survive emergencies.

The challenge comes — in any of our pursuits — when we’ve successfully put out all the fires, but we’re still on high alert. When we find ourselves waiting for another urgent issue to call for our immediate attention … and nothing arrives.

Meanwhile, the important but non-urgent problems persist.

For us to have an impact on those critical but slow-moving issues, we need to attend to them during the fire-free seasons, even if those are just brief moments that we can regularly create.