The Big Picture

 Imagine yourself from a birds eye view, sitting infront of your computer screen. Then zoom out, and you see your house, or whichever builiding you happen to be in. Other people walking around, with their own tasks, their own thoughts, emotions etc. It's a small picture of a few individuals, all on their own paths. Zoom out more, and maybe you see a city. The people are barely noticeable, and the picture is defined by the buildings, and the streets with cars systematically speeding up and slowing down. It's an organized flow, built up of thousands of smaller images or people living independently, believing in their own importance... but from further our, all those smaller images add to one bigger frame, where nothing is independent. Everything contributes to that systematic, organized flow. Zoom out further, maybe you picture the whole country... then even further and you see the world. Every little detail loses significance. Erasing an entire city would have no impact on what you see. This is the big picture. 

 Of course, this is a more literal interpretation of 'the big picture'. Instead of just looking beyond yourself to the people of the world, it's about seeing the world as a whole and realizing how unimportant one person is. Not focusing in on details, not even about the system it creates... but the net movement of that system.  The idea that all actions are connected... the lives of all people added together to create this system of life... in some kind of equilibrium... it really adds up to nothing at all. The meaning of the individual is to add to the whole, but the meaning of the whole is simply to progress in this way. 

 I guess what I'm trying to get at is the distiction between the meaning and purpose of individual life, and that of life as a whole. The big picture has no meaning other than to carry on itself, with no final goal. Life and death, and whatever actions that occur during or before or after either have no importance on the greater scale. It's within this circle of being, that any action can have purpose. 

 Reading through my old journal entries I was thinking about all my goals and aspirations, which have been building and developing all my life... seeing myself as someone who could change the world. By living my life with my own purpose, I would make a big impact on others. I want to be free, and just live in a way that I will have personal satisfaction. I want to come to the end of my life and think that I've left a piece of myself behind. Even knowing that life has no purpose beside carrying on iteself when I zoom back in to my individual circle I want to know that what I'm doing is changing the smaller circles around me, and that I'm taking in the effect of others as well. 

 Side thought... even thinking that each life in connected to those around it... all independent lives still somehow dependent on each other... how many of those other lives do you actually ever get to know. Of course you can't know someone elses life like you know your own... but how often do we really try? How often do we look beyond ourselves at the people around us, and try to see inside of them, and know there life? 

That's all for now...
.Erin