emergent ink

We would be able to do some pretty big things, as individuals and together, if we didn’t keep losing sight of the big picture.

The big picture is not a religion, or a political position, or a philosophy. It’s not the meaning of life. But it does give life some meaning.

The big picture is not big, but it can be. It can also be very small. The big picture is what you are trying to accomplish, your goal. It’s what is important to you. You can have more than one, and you can share them. You may work on more than one at a time, too.

The problem most of us have is that we forget about the big picture, and get distracted with all sorts of other things.

If the big picture was just that, a big picture, most of us spend more time worrying about the frame, where we’re going to hang it, or how to get it home and less time on the picture itself.

We go to the mall and flip through a stack of prints, pick out one that’s roughly the right shape and color, and don’t spend a lot of time on what the painting or photograph means, how it fits in with the rest of the stuff in our house, who the artist is. This works for most of us most of the time because art doesn’t have to mean anything or do anything except hang on the wall. But our approach to other problems whether they are national, local, or personal is similar, and has worse consequences.

Let’s start with the energy crisis, one of our shared national big pictures. John McCain says offshore drilling and nuclear power will solve this problem. Barack Obama says electric cars and taxing the oil companies are the answers.

We may try all these things. Have you ever visited a house that looks like the owner visited those art stores in the malls too much? Sometimes, less is more.

And if you think about it, less is more when it comes to the energy crisis. But first, what is the energy crisis, really? The high price of gasoline and diesel, which is driving up the cost of everything else, is part of it. So are the rising prices of home heating oil and natural gas.

Blaming big oil companies, foreign nations, and speculators for the rising price of these commodities is a distraction from the real big picture, which is that we are overly dependent on oil and gas for too many things.

The thing that has worked to ease prices in the past two months is that Americans are trying to make do with less of this stuff. That reduction in demand has eased the pressure on supply and prices have come down.

That’s what I meant when I said less is more when it comes to the energy crisis. Conservation is the key, but we need to do a lot more to use less. And we need to figure out how we can survive, or how our lifestyles have to change, to do this.

You won’t find our politicians talking about this, not if they want to get elected. Nuclear power and offshore drilling won’t help us for a decade, at least, and then not enough. Wind and solar and electric cars are not quick fixes, either. All of them together can only work to end our dependence on foreign (and domestic) fossil fuel if we also find ways to reduce our energy consumption and waste.

As long as we’re distracted with political talk and empty promises, this big picture won’t get solved.

The big picture in New Fairfield is whether we are going to be able to build a senior center.

That is all it is. The big picture is not whether we can build a senior center that will cost a certain amount of money, or when it will be built, or how long it has taken, or what it will look like.

The economic basis for a town built and owned senior center is still there. As is our promise to build it.

I served on the Permanent Building Committee with Bob Rawlings. I know how hard the PBC worked on this project and how difficult it can be to balance the town’s interests with coaxing a recalcitrant contractor towards final delivery.

But Cheryl Reedy was right to point out that the town’s interests have to come before politics and hurt feelings.

Distractions were on full display last Thursday night, taking the focus away from the big picture.

The building of this senior center should not be a Democrat or Republican issue.

Another thing: our position on the senior center should not be based on whether or not we like the First Selectman.

Some of the people who showed up last Thursday night to defend the PBC would never forgive Hodge for allowing an architect to violate a contract. But they were willing to defend the PBC for doing the same thing.

Maybe the problem is that some people don’t share the same big picture for the town senior center.

In the football movie Any Given Sunday, Al Pacino gives a great locker room speech to his team about focusing on the big picture. He says that life and football are games of inches. The margin of error is that small, and it’s how you fight for those inches that decide whether you win or lose, live or die.

On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch, because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the #%&! difference between winning and losing! Between livin’ and dyin’!

All too often, we spend too much time on the tearing ourselves to pieces part, and let those inches slip by.