34. Big Picture Stuff (for Dad)

Hello and welcome, I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. A podcast meant for sharing thoughts, stories, enjoying idiomatic phrases and words in general. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Today, Big Picture Stuff. The big picture refers to everything that comprises or makes up a situation. The biggest picture might be life itself. The opposite or its antonym is a little picture or when you have a limited perspective of something.   Perspective is important. It can make or break your capacity to cope, find a solution, or even get up in the morning, depending on what you are going through. Getting perspective can help a lot. You get perspective or things are put into perspective with information, evidence, and events.  For example, when your priorities change because something has become evidently more important. Having children or caring for beings that depend on you. That provides a decent perspective of what matters. When your health has been compromised because you haven’t taken care of yourself, you might be motivated to make changes to get healthy. Sometimes it is not in your hands. That sucks. That royally sucks. It might be a pivotal moment, when you change how you fundamentally make decisions or do things. Things change and plans change. Dancing is so symbolic of life in this sense. You cannot stay in one place, you need to engage your whole body and mind to move, and if you want it to look effortless, learn to control your facial expressions. This also avoids wrinkling your face in the wrong way. The right way to wrinkle your face is by smiling and laughing. I’ve avoided the other types of wrinkles. At least, that is what I like to say. You might hear yourself saying —if only I had known then what I know today! I would have made a different decision. And someone might answer, hindsight is 20/20. This phrase means when you have more or all the information (who really knows if we ever have all the information??), information regarding the consequences of your decisions. Lots of movies deal with this topic, if you know what is going to happen, you might get into a time machine and go back to tell your past self or someone else in the past to make a different decision. This is a great fantasy.  Hindsight is 20/20… but you know what? If you stick around long enough, you get answers to certain questions, the value of a certain variable in an equation. Thinking that something is meant to be and then having that fall through, like a job opportunity, a scholarship, or a relationship can be devastating. Thinking to yourself — this was a sure thing, and not getting it can be confusing and painful. There are times we are lucky enough to get a glimpse into what we avoid by not getting what we want, maybe a hardship or a bad experience. Sometimes, not getting what you want is a blessing in disguise. It might be you’ve dodged a bullet. Like when you don’t get the job you thought you were perfect for and you find something that is even better, more fulfilling, and hopefully, better paid. I know I’ve wondered about certain events, like leaving the house 5 minutes later than I had planned only to see that I avoided a car accident. It has also been the case that I don’t avoid it. Was it fate? A bad combination of factors? Did those factors come together to make my own personal perfect storm? In the words of my father: shit happens. Continue reading <