When You Can't See the Bigger Picture
I was standing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, waiting for my husband to cross.
I didn’t realize how emotional I’d be. Yes for him, but also for strangers completing something so monumental. Each one with their own journey and story of how they got there.
The 79 year old man who had won the Boston Marathon in 1968. Two strangers supporting and half carrying an older man over the finish line who had injured himself. Friends holding hands as they crossed.
Some looked bedraggled, some looked energized. Some ran for a cause, others ran for themselves.
Every time someone crossed the finish line it was like a little tiny miracle happening before my eyes.
And on their faces was this joy, this fulfillment. The look of I did it. You could see it in their tired smiles, their tears, the surge of energy that happened as they got closer.
We were watching people for about an hour and half and towards the end of our time there, I noticed a man. Late 20s, early 30s. Clearly fit, but walking. A scowl etched across his face, disappointment rolling off of him.
Something had happened and he couldn't run the last stretch.
But he was almost there, moments from the finish line, and he was going to cross it.
From where I was standing on the risers, I could see the stretchers and the people who had been carried off. The ones who started but wouldn't finish. I knew what it meant that he was still moving toward that line.
He couldn't see any of that. He could only see the gap between how this was supposed to go and how it was actually going.
And that gap had become the whole story.But it didn’t have to be.
I think we’ve all been in moments like that – especially when we’re in our WTF era – where we can only see the unmet expectations or the disappointment of it all.
But you can learn how to be in the story and be in the risers. You can be eyeballs deep in the thing and still have a bird’s eye view of what’s going on.
It's a skill. And it's one of the most important ones you can build when you're in the middle of uncertainty or something hard.
If you're in it right now – the WTF era, a transition, something that just won't resolve – I would love to know what's the hardest part of not being able to see the bigger picture? Hit reply and let me know.
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