Big Picture
I may be an idiot (very possible), but when I think of the "Big Picture," I think of big concepts like: God, love, history, humanity, life & death, etc. There's an episode of the TV series Suits where Jessica, the founding partner at the firm, tells Mike, an upstart associate, that he's not looking at the big picture. As the episode unfolds, you realize that Jessica's idea of the "big picture" is to make as much money for the firm as possible. In my mind, this seems like a pretty narrow picture. Mike had been focused on the moral and ethical concerns of the case. For my money, the picture he was looking at was much bigger.
I think the world needs more dreamers. I've noticed when you're a kid, the world is huge. Opportunities are limitless. Potential is infinite. Every experience an adventure. You can go anywhere and do anything in your lifetime. I saw a kid the other day whose parents gave him a walking stick or a cane of some kind to carry (just a little task to keep him occupied), and in his imagination, the cane was controlling him, guiding him randomly here to there, and he had to fight against it's will. It was a battle of wits. And I think that's a good example of how kids have this innate ability to take something small and insignificant and to see something greater in it -- to see a world of possibility in the mundane. In my opinion, keeping that outlook into adulthood is a key aspect of seeing the big picture.
When we become adults, the world gets smaller, because we pin ourselves into things, important things like marriage, family, work, etc. And we only have enough time to pursue a limited number of experiences. That's just part of growing up. Our potential shrinks. The possibility of life becomes small, but that doesn't mean we can't still coax every last drop of life and possibility out of every tiny detail.
People sometimes laugh at Christians for searching for signs from God in the everyday.
But what beauty! What a powerful and remarkable world we live in if the Creator of the Universe catches our eye with the glint of a firefly or startles us awake with a roll of thunder at just the right moment of a dream.
And maintaining that outlook instead of just trudging from paycheck to paycheck, makes us richer and fuller and creates a vaster, more powerful world for us to live in.
Let's say you're in a giant room with walls covered floor to ceiling with pictures, pictures of all kinds -- paintings, drawings, portraits, landscapes, whatever. Ok. And that's it. That's your whole life...100 years in this room. Same pictures everyday. How would you go about living? Some people might pour over every little detail of 10 random pictures and call themselves experts, and that's totally respectable. But what if you looked at each picture as something greater, as a glimpse into a world outside the room or a glimpse into the mind of the artist? Or maybe a little detail in this picture helps you better understand the meaning of another. That's a sign, a symbol, a theme that hopes and reaches and strives for something beyond just a roomful of pictures. That is big picture thinking, and it has the power to transform life's routine into an adventure.
