ELEPHANT

The expression "elephant in the room" is used to denote a significant issue that is obvious to everyone, but which they avoid discussing or even mentioning. According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of the phrase, as a simile, was in The New York Times on June 20, 1959: Financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room. It's so big you just can't ignore it.

For While She Sleeps guitarist Sean Long, the elephant in the room is mankind's inability to get on with each other. War and destruction will carry on until we learn how to live in harmony. Turn the page, another headline that you already knew Paint the picture of a lie behind the truth We're on a flatline in a sorry state of affairs Losing the will to live like we're going nowhere Long explained to Rock Sound: "Everybody is trying to achieve world peace while some people are trying to blow everything up and god knows what is happening in the middle. Has no one ever noticed that everyone has never been OK with each other? The only way world peace can happen is if people realize that not everyone will be the same. That's the true elephant in the room."