Don't drown in details. Look and read the signs and create a greater picture. It makes your live lighter.

It seems, lately, that I meet more and more people who have their day spoiled by something specific, a detail. And yes, details are important.

One time the reason is a message in the (social) media. The other time the disturbance is by something someone has said to them. Another time for something that went wrong. Plenty of examples.

The focus is on details and things are literally magnified. I often have the feeling that it is a big waste of energy. Everything you give attention grows and you not only influence yourself but also your environment with the irritation that you have called upon yourself. You can even disturb your night rest with it.

It seems to be no more than human that details have a disruptive influence on how "wide" we live our lives.

As a member of a group of photographers here in Chiang Mai (Thailand), one of the things that I deal with in that photo hobby is a different, deeper and wider way of looking. And indeed, that is paying attention to detail. However, that is only possible if you first consider the whole. No detail without a big picture.

And when you look at that large whole again, you find that that too is a detail from an even larger, infinite whole. Just like we ourselves are only that very small pin, or perhaps even less, of that infinitely large whole.

By continuing to focus on details, you miss the whole picture. A whole that always has much more to offer than just that detail.

Once during a lesson at the Buddhist university, the class got a question about a similar photo as I post in this blog. The question was to take some time to discover what you could discover in the drawing.

Some saw, by connecting the black dots, an animal or an object. Still others, like me, just got stuck in the remark of some black dots.

We learned that this is our natural response. Attention to the very limited surface of some black dots. We may have seen the large sheet of white paper, but the attention was not there at all.

And so, it is with all our news that we, in a constant stream, are absorbing. It is "only" the focus of something small within something much bigger. You may wonder whether you should constantly be distracted or disrupted by these details.

Seeing the bigger picture gives distance. Literally and figuratively, to keep an overview and to keep you more stable and in balance.

Look and read the signs and create a greater picture. It keeps you more balanced and makes your life lighter for yourself and the world around you.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)
email: captijninsight@gmail.com 

Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.