The Bigger Picture.

I’ve strange impulses, sometimes. I’ll tell one of them to you, but promise me not to tell anyone. I find myself the only one doing it amidst a crowd of others at the strangest of times and settings, and in a society like ours, it just might be equivalent to having an idiosyncracy such as having to pick your nose before touching a lift button.

I often have this irresistable urge to sprawl out, uninhibited, on the ground and stretch my limbs out infinitely sideways. After an exam especially, while everyone discusses animatedly where they want to have lunch, what movie they want to watch and which mall to shop at, I find my eyes inadvertently flitting to the nearest sunspot, and find my feet drawn to the nearest golden spotlight like a lost moth to lampstand. Nothing better than drinking in glorious sunshine after hours spent sitting in an exam hall so cold you’d think your fingers might get frostbite should you decide to rest your pen for a moment.

That day after the exam paper, while a close friend and I were waiting for transport, I heaved a sigh and felt myself sink to the floor, my arms unrolled sideways like a royal carpet on both ends, underneath a huge umbrella tree, on a slope of cool, crisp grass.

Tis the best feeling in the world, to have an impulse and pursue it, without a care about anyone watching you, and having the world pass you by, as you bask in sun-soaked stillness, in wanton abandon, free from the temporary petty cares of the world which gnaw at us daily like nasty bed-bugs.

Have you tried that before? Finding your own snug rug of grass underneath a tree and suddenly unfolding yourself on a whim, letting the sunlight, broken through the canopy of leaves, fool your mind between darkness and light as you squint playfully at the sky above? The meshwork of leaves against an azure sky makes for a pretty pattern- you find yourself mesmerised, enchanted at once.

Beautiful, isn’t it? The sight of leaves, small as pins, so intricately embroidered like a complex pattern against the blue, blue sky. One can’t help but be captivated.

And then it struck me, under the generous shade of that big umbrella tree, that just as how often we are enthralled by that which is presented before us, can it be that so often, we miss the Bigger Picture? Could it be possible that in our focus on the stunning motif of florid fauna before our eyes, that we forget, the grander, far more majestic display of the vast, vast Sky beyond it?

For where the meshwork of leaves are, those leaves which have captured our attention, is exactly where the Sky has been blocked out.

We bury ourselves under a pile of papers, allowing work to consume us, wanting to be the be the best we can be, so we can live the best life possible… but could it be that all that hard labouring had long ago killed the fire that burned at the start, made us so disillusioned, and made us less than we started out as? Busy parents work themselves to the bone, placing their jobs above all else in the name of giving their children the happiest and best childhood… but could it be that all Junior really wanted was for mummy and daddy to watch him at the soccer-game at Sports Day? We keep doing, keep excelling, keep running, all in the name of living our lives victoriously for God and our families, but could it be that all we spent our time and energy on really went against what we started out to achieve?

At the end, did your labouring kill your passion, was your child materially satisfied but emotionally neglected, did all that you set out to do turn its back on you, did you focus so much on what you thought would fulfill your goal that you missed the Bigger Picture altogether? Did you clinch a post but lose your integrity, win an argument but lose a friend, reach your dreams but lose your childlike wonder?

In the crazy everyday rat-race to reach one’s goals, when all our energies are consumed in the tasks layed before us, could it be that what He really wanted was for us to stop, and just to be content in His presence, doing… nothing?

Sometimes, in our desperate pursuit to find meaning and purpose in our lives, I wonder if we try so hard to find them in what we can see, and what we can do, that we completely forget what lies beyond them. When we focus our eyes on the doing, the completion of the tasks at hand-people to help, projects to do, things to achieve- I wonder if we’ve sometimes become so absorbed in the animated euphoria caused by own dissipated energy that we miss the bigger picture altogether.

Could the very thing you’ve been trying so hard to focus your eyes on, the canopy of leaves, be the very thing blocking out what you’ve been trying so hard to see- the vastness of the blue, blue Sky?

In our attempt to find God, do we try so hard and put in so much energy to focus on the good deeds we could do, right principles we could live by, people we could help, things we could achieve, the kind of life we could live, that we miss Him altogether? Could it be possible that the very things that we thought would so lead us to a higher place, could be the very things blocking Him out in the first place?

Are we human beings, or human doings.

Are we so busy in our doing that we sometimes forget what it was we were looking for? Have you been so busy looking for God in what you do that you don’t realise that it’s precisely what you’ve been doing that has been blocking Him out? Are we sometimes so caught up and mesmerised with our tasks at hand that we forget why we started out altogether, forget why we did what we did, forget to love, stop, or listen?

Have we missed the Bigger Picture?

Perhaps it isn’t as complicated as we think at all. It’s as simple as the open Sky.

The wind blows a cool breeze, I look up, and the leaves, small as pins, tease me. Here and there, they rustle, allowing a new patch of Sky, a new sunspot to peek through. I almost see His eyes winking at me, with a peek-a-boo-like cheekiness.

The leaves are beautiful, but something far more so lies beyond it. Just as there’s nothing wrong to admire them, there’s absolutely no wrong in admiring our humanistic attempts to seek meaning and purpose, to grasp the divine.

Just that, at the end of the day, when you’ve done all you could in your own human strength to find who we call God, and find yourself beaten and dry, burnt-out and disillusioned, do you ask yourself why, too?

Then perhaps it may just be time to stop, time to lie down, sprawl out on a rug of grass, and instead of squinting at the leaves trying to find whatever it was you were trying to, to just… step out from underneath the trees, forget about squinting at the leaves to look at the Sky for what it is- big, simple, uninhibited.

Step out from beneath the trees… to finally see the vast, vast expanse of Sky, the bigness of His majesty, the Bigger Picture that we were meant to live for… unfold before your very eyes.

Photo by Xi

Concept and modelling by Wai Jia