In life, the bigger picture often becomes hard to see when focusing on smaller paths. Each day, decisions are made: What do I want to eat? What do I want to buy? What should I wear to work? Getting caught up in mundane tasks can be a trap. Questions like “Where am I going next?” or “How should I impress my boss at work?” often fill the minds of many, especially during uncertain times.
While navigating life, I used to focus so much on small tasks. When I was in school, I constantly pressured myself to achieve the best grades and participate in the best extracurricular activities. But then, I also worried about not reaching my goals. Seven years later, I finally understood that the small tasks in life don’t matter as much as the bigger picture. The mark you get on your midterm exam. Will others care about that in the future? And the executive position you held in a club—who would even know you were an executive two years down the line?
For those who constantly find themselves thinking of the smaller tasks, here is a poem that can help you reflect on them:
Small drops of water
Less than a millilitre
Fill the cup higher
A penny saved
Turns into
Ten dollars made
Millions of microchips
create hundreds of
Billions of clips
Small rocks
Gather together
Forming sand in flocks
A seed planted
Turns to a
Tree implanted
Nearby, the acre of grass
Is repurposed
Into a building of glass
Once a small village
Now, a big city
Throughout the ages
When you ask me about it,
I find it absolutely remarkable.
The world has grown.
Inventions have blown.
But I’ll say,
The skyscraper is not only cement.
The big city wasn’t what it was.
The glass buildings aren’t built on grass.
The trees aren’t just seeds.
The dollars aren’t pennies.
The clips aren’t just from microchips.
I need to learn that
They were each other
At some point.
It’s just that
I’m standing
Looking above
Asking myself
What’s ahead of me?
And I wonder
Who am I?
Sometimes in life, we focus too much on the question “Who am I?” and look ahead at the bigger picture before us. However, we need to remember that, no matter the situation we face, we should understand the full context or the story behind it. In the end, life isn’t about where we are right now: a future is still awaiting us.
Featured image via Vlada Karpovich on Pexels
