THE BIG PICTURE
(A Metaphor)
Once home and tired after his day, the father enjoyed a period of peace and quiet reading the newspaper, relaxing in his favorite chair after dinner. Afterward he and the boy would go to another room where they would play before mother would come in and announce that it's time for bed and to "Say goodnight to your father."
On this particular evening the boy was impatient. He didn't want to wait for his father to read the paper. "Dad," he said, "play with me." Seeing how insistent the boy was, his father looked into the paper and, finding a full page map of the world, got an idea. "Okay," he said, "let’s play!"
As he spoke, he began tearing the page with the map on it in half and then in half again, and then again and again until his hands were full of small scraps of rectangular bits of paper containing oceans, poles, continents and land masses. With a broad sweep of his hands he scattered the pieces above and in front of his head, covering the entire floor in the middle of the room. "You put the pieces of this big picture together and by the time you've finished I’ll have read my paper and we can play before your bedtime."
The boy agreed and began putting the pieces together. His father relaxed. Fully absorbed in reading, he then all but forgot about the little boy and his assignment. Before long, however, he felt a small hand tugging at his pant leg. There, seated on the floor was his son, a wide grin lighting his innocent face, and there behind him fully assembled was -- a full map of the world.
Amazed, he dropped his paper and with both his hands took hold of his son and looking him in the eyes said, "How did you ever manage to do that so quickly?"
"It was easy, dad," was the reply. "When you took the page out of the paper, I saw there was a picture of a man on the other side and I realized that once I put the man together the whole world would come together."
And so it is in The Big Picture that each and every neighborhood and community within our experience becomes part of that interconnected and interdependent world in a nutshell.
Quotations About Maps, Puzzles, Thought, Creativity, and Objectivity
 "Analysis is simplifying, breaking down things into parts, picking out strands and elements. Analysis is comparing unknown things with things that are known. Analysis also involves picking out relationships and putting them back together as a whole." Edward de Bono "The vertical thinker says: 'I know what I am looking for.' The lateral thinker says: 'I am looking but I won't know what I am looking for until I have found it.'" Edward de Bono |
 You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction." Alvin Toffler "It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution." Alvin Toffler |
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