My dad used to say, "Don't get lost in the minutia." It was his way of telling us to see the big picture. But it has taken me years to fully incorporate his advice into my lifestyle. It is so easy to get bogged down in the details of our immediate situation, especially if things aren't going the way we want them to. In particular if our desires are not being met, our needs are not being fulfilled and our general sense of well being is flailing because the current moment is not providing what we believe we must have to be happy.
There are so many examples of this; a toddler who has lost their pacifier, a teenager who has one bad grade, a young adult who wants a love that has not materialized yet and, as we age, the life changes that interrupt our physical well being and slow us down. In all of these situations, if we focus on what is immediately missing or changing or hasn't panned out as we expected, we will inevitably lose site of the vastness of the forest through the proverbial trees.
The toddler forgets that mom will find or replace the pacifier because her love is bigger than their loss, the teenager loses site of the fact that one bad grade can be remedied with a little more hard work, the young adult forgets that love is about timing, and we forget that years and years of building a foundation for ourselves and our relationships can carry us through physical or psychological obstacles that have slowed us down and changed our day to day health and well being.
During these fleeting points of feeling deprived of what we believe we want and need, we need to remind ourselves that the obstacles that arise from the weakness in a single tree, is not our only reality. Instead, our truth lies in the love and dedication that is the foundation of our relationship with ourselves and others, because that is the strength that built the forest.
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