Why is the notation for reactions not explicit?

I hope that the title of the question is not completely wrong or misleading, however I couldn't think up of a better one.

I have a follow up question to this one. If we look at the following reaction, $$\ce{C + O2 -> CO2}$$

we are taught that gases like oxygen (looking at the reactants), when not part of a compound, always appear in molecular form.

But if to follow one of the answers in the referred question, the reaction has a little more to it. I quote:

carbon, as normally found in nature as graphite, consists of a molecular solid with every carbon bonded to several other carbons. The reaction C + O2 is shorthand for solid carbon plus oxygen gas, so the reaction involves breaking lots of C-C bonds and O=O bonds resulting in CO2. You have to account for all the bonds broken and formed to know the energy difference.

Why is this fact not accounted for in the reaction $\ce{C + O2 -> CO2}$, in other words, why do we 'allow' carbon to be a free atom (although it's not, in the form of graphite) and 'demand' that the oxygen is in a molecular form? I do assume that chemical reactions are a form of abstraction, that is, we say that regardless of where that carbon atom comes from, it will react with the oxygen molecule into a carbon dioxide, but I still don't understand why we then apply those molecule constraints to oxygen.

To be more explicit about it: the energy spent to break the C-C bonds in the graphite crystal is not easily readable from the reaction, while the fact that the O=O bonds are split, and therefore energy is input into the system, is.