Big Pictures & Details

I have always enjoyed the first day of school. I enjoyed the newness. New teachers, new spirals, new pens or pencils, a new start…

I will admit there were parts of the first day of school I was not so excited about, especially in college and seminary. I dread seeing the Syllabus (the big picture), the pieces of paper that would direct my life (as far as that class went) for the next few months. The long list of reading assignments, projects, and papers (the details that make the big picture a reality) seemed so overwhelming on the first day of class. But as the semester went on, the list became shorter and shorter. Chapters were read, projects were completed, papers were turned in, tests were taken… At the end of the semester or the end of the year I could look back and see all I had accomplished. I could look back and see how far I had come and how much I had learned. I could look back and see that what at first seemed impossible and overwhelming had been achieved and completed.

If I had stayed focused on the big picture I would not have been able to accomplish many of the details that would make the big picture a reality. Focusing only on the big picture can be overwhelming if you do not know how to get there. On the other hand, if I stayed focused on the details I would have eventually been discouraged by not seeing where these tasks were leading me. Focusing on the tasks can be overwhelming, with all that has to be done, so much so that we can forget the big picture and forget why we are doing what we are doing.

There is a balance between the two. Luckily, or unfortunately, everyone’s balance is a little different. There are some people who are big picture people. They can see the possibilities; they can see what they want the end product to be, yet too often we have a hard time getting there because they do not want to be bothered with the details. There are other people who are detail people. They can see the processes that can get us “there”, they know what needs to happen and the pitfalls that might spring up between now and making the big picture a reality, yet too often they have a hard time looking up from the details to remember why they are doing these tasks.

Do you have dreams, but rarely see them become a reality? Do you get a lot of stuff done, but rarely know why you do all that you do? We live our lives so fast we forget to take a look around us. If we never see our dreams become a reality, it may be because we never slow down to see what we need to do to get there, or share our dream with other people so they can help us know how to get there or join us on the journey and we get there together. If we rarely know why we do what we do, it may be because we never slow down to see where we are going, or we have not embraced any big picture and so are not going anywhere.

Maybe your big picture, your dreams, need to be shared so they become our dreams and we accomplish them together. Maybe you need to grasp someone else’s dream and show them how to get there. Who knows, maybe that is why we start out our education in classes of our peers, so that we can learn to work together and accomplish more than we ever thought we could on our own…