The Big Picture

Back in the late 70’s I had a martial arts sensei at a dojo in East L.A. who taught me something about vision: See the big picture, he said. Not a unique turn of phrase, to be sure, but he went on to elaborate. 

He had learned this mantra from his platoon sergeant on recon duty in the tall grasses of Southeast Asia—and he had come to depend on it for his survival. The idea, according to the sergeant, was not to focus on any one thing in particular unless and until it became absolutely necessary.  If you concentrated your attention too narrowly, you might soon be dead.  And you’d never see it coming.

Instead, he said, expand your vision.  Open your eyes like a wide-angle lens, taking in everything, all at once, everything you can see in front of you and everything on the periphery.  Your eyes and the brain they feed have a remarkable capacity to inventory and understand what you’re seeing.  

Notice where the shadows fall.  Do any of them seem unusual or out of place in the rest of the picture?  Observe the wind riffling over the sea of grass.   Is there a patch of green that’s out of sync, or moving in the wrong direction?  Be aware of your own presence, your movement through this scene.  How does it alter the panorama?  What observable clues are you leaving in your wake?

It’s a simple way of seeing, my sensei told me, that I could apply to every part of my life.  See the whole and know your part in it, he said.  Understand the design, the integrated logic of it.  Be present and available to possibility.   

Challenges or opportunities may present themselves, sometimes when least expected, but you’ll be ready for them.  You’ve already seen them coming—because you’ve seen the big picture.