The big picture

[susandennis]

Every once in a while I get a thought to chew on that takes me days to work through. Sometimes I figure it out, but more often, I just get tired of chewing. I'm old enough to know that I can live a fine life without knowing everything.

Two areas of my life keep making me think of details versus the big picture. And then, on the news the other night, there was a piece about a guy who takes gigantic photographs and gets both the big picture and the detail.

It's important to sometimes step back and look at everything before you judge details. At work, every day, I see screw ups and problems and bad decisions and blatant idiocy. It was liked this when I worked here in the late 90's and it's the same these days. It's very hard to understand how this company survives. And, yet, if you stand back and look at the big picture, you see that, in fact, they survive pretty darned well. So clearly the big picture is what counts here.

I have aches and pains. I'm sore all over some days. My ankles swell with the heat and my back gets tired and sore way more easily than it ever has before. I don't move as well as I used to. I don't have nearly the stamina that I used to. I am also about 75 pounds heavier than I have ever been before in my life. I am also older than I have ever been (with a keen eye for the obvious) and, hopefully, post menopausal (although, I really have no idea how one knows when one is post menopausal).

And yet every day, I wake up and manage just fine. Another big picture success story.

When I was little, my Mom belonged to the Eat What's On Your Plate school. And, man, I hated some of that stuff. But squash was my downfall. I remember distinctly sitting at the dinner table and logically working through whether or not this stuff was going to kill me. Went to the big picture. I remember noodling out whether or not Mom was out to kill me. The big picture seem to shade towards no. But that squash still made me gag.

And when do the details start to tell you that the big picture will be corrupt at some future point?

Since the details that bug me every hour here at work have basically been the same for nearly a decade (and probably way more than that) and the company is still chugging along basically unencumbered by them, I have to conclude that it's just part of the deal. Would they be more successful if there was less idiocy? Maybe. Would clearing out the ugly details be cost effective? No idea and I'm guessing not or they probably would have done it.

Whenever I hear anyone describing the first symptoms they noticed prior to a major physical downfall, I pay close attention. Probably too close. When I focus on the big picture - I'm alive and well and functioning pretty darned good for an old, fat woman - I'm a whole lot healthier :)

I actually thought pounding this whole big picture thing out in a journal entry would help me understand what it is that's bugging me about this whole issue. So far, not so much.

Comments

[greggorythomas.livejournal.com]

Mt father subscribed to the Eat What's On Your Plate school of thought as well.

and I swear it's the main cause behind my eating problems, Basically I hate to eat, and when I do I hardly ever finish everything.

Beats were my down fall. I kept telling him they would make me puke, he forces me to eat them and well, They did.

To this day I can't even tolerate the smell of those things.

[roadskoller.livejournal.com]

Every once in a while I think I'm finally post menopausal and then the hot flashes start again. *sigh*
I also found out with this last trip, that the arthritis in my hands has gotten to the point that it's hard for me to do the inventories legibly. (sp?) I had to actually take percodan to help me along and that just makes me goofier than usuall. But we just keep chugging along, don't we.

[rivendweller.livejournal.com]

One foot in front of the other. I was about to throw in the towel a few months ago. Chronic headache and other problems. Finally I had a epiphany a few weeks ago and now I'm well on my way to a renewed outlook. I don't feel so old anymore. 56 isn't so bad. I have a good 15 or 20 years of working life left in me, and I'm going to grab it while I can. My problem was I was adopting Ray's age: he's 70. I'm not, dammit.

[pheon.livejournal.com]

Thanks.It is necessary to step back for the big picture. And I don't do it often enough.

I tend to get so wound up in the minutia of whatever I'm currently focused on that I can't see a grove, let alone the forest. Luckily, I cannot stay focused on one thing for very long, so I am usually bouncing from project to project. Which if it doesn't give me the big picture at least allows me to see a mosaic. [To mix my metaphors.]