Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Perspective

Have you ever been working on something big, working for a long time, working really hard... and maybe there was a little detail you couldn't get right, or some part of the whole that took longer to finish, and you stop finally to take a breath or get a drink or take a day off and you realize at that moment that you had lost sight of what you were working toward? That the whole world had narrowed down to one little problem, one little bit of work that you had to do, and that everything else was lost in the effort to finish that little bit?

How do you move toward completion if that little bit's still not done? How do you regain perspective?

I have been putting a lot of effort into one part of my life, and I'm failing. And I can not live with failure, but I don't know how to succeed or even how to let it go and work on something else for a while. Suggestions?

3 comments:

  1. Perspective? JRR Tolkien, _Leaf, by Niggle_ (your local library should have it in a collection of his short stories).

    Advice? "The Gambler", sung by Kenny Rodgers (youtube should have it).

    I suffer with the same or similar: "_this_ detail has to be right before _____ ..." and things can back up (or collapse) from there, but the problem has been known (and relatively common) for centuries. My mom used to quote from what her dad told her: "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost. For want of the horse, the general was lost, for want of the general the battle was lost. For want of the battle, the war was lost. For want of the war, the country was lost - all for the want of a horseshoe nail."

    Sometimes the simplest things really are critical, and sometimes they are critical only to one person - If I got sucked up by a tornado tomorrow, I seriously doubt that half the things on my "critical" list would survive me. If only the house got sucked up and scattered, there would be a whole 'nuther set of "critical" things reordered on my list (and probably a few things that are no longer on it). I suppose it all depends on what specifically has you "stuck".

    Of course, all these words may or may not apply. Your mom has the crystal ball, and I left the irregular small medium at large in the Dale.

    Give a call - if nothing else, I still have two ears and a fairly sharp mind (and you probably remember what they say about two heads...)

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  2. Well Maybe you need to remember why you started that little bit? What made you run towards that part of life? Maybe analyzing all that will help you regain faith in that little bit .

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  3. Hey!! Maybe I dont know you but still your blog is wonderfull...Seriously.

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