Seeing the forest with the trees

Lately, I’ve been trying to take a long look at life. Seeking to step back and get a wide-angle shot of what I’m doing and where I’m going.

This thinking brought to mind a saying one of my college professors had. He taught a course on how nations related to each other. Every once in a while he’d point out that a country’s leaders had focused too much on details and failed to see the big picture.

“They couldn’t see the forest for the trees,” he’d say.

Sometimes I feel like that. I’ve got all these things going on in life that need attention. And often each of them has multiple facets, each requiring time and effort.

I like all the various areas of my life. I need or want each of them. But I need and want to know how they all connect.

When looking for answers it’s always best to first ask questions. Here’s five that I’m pondering:

• What is the most important thing I want to accomplish with the rest of my life and why? Or as I friend so eloquently put it, “When you look back on your life, what do you want to see?”

• What are the reasons for all the various things I do? In other words, why do I do the things that I do?

• What are my priorities? Among these various things, which do I need to do more than others? Which do I want to do more than others?

• Who benefits and how? When I perform these tasks, what is the result?

• What do I get out of each? How do the various things fit into my life’s purpose, my mission, my reason for being?

I’m still working through all this, but I feel certain that as I consider these, the pieces of my sometimes puzzled life will start fitting together.

Steve DeVane