Balancing the Big Picture with the Small

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Jessica: Hello, and thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Jessica. My co-host, Bob, is here as well. Today, we’re going to be talking about balancing the big picture with the small. Bob’s going to share a practice with us. Hi, Bob, how are you?

Bob: I’m doing really well, Jessica. Thanks so much for asking. Earlier this week, I was able to attend a retreat for NDSU Extension Family and Community Wellness Specialists, which I fall in that bucket actually at NDSU, and it really has me energized. I work remotely 99% of the time, so I don’t get many chances to meet with colleagues in person and discuss the work that we’re all doing. I had so many interesting conversations at the retreat. It was really fun. We were able, I think, to spend more time just sharing about our work and lives.

It’s amazing how much deeper conversations can get when they’re not restricted by time. I mentioned the remote thing, but in regular meetings, whether they’re in person or online, I think we all have that time constraint somewhere in our mind. Obviously, we might have a next meeting coming up or something that we want to work on after this thing is over, and it’s scheduled for a certain amount of time.

Vampire Weekend has a song where they talk about the slow click of a ticking clock, and I always think of that lyric when I find myself obsessed by time. At the retreat, we had a couple of days. Our director was responsible for the schedule, not for us. There was a schedule, but I think we all felt freed from that time constraint. That really deepened the conversations. It was really amazing. I’m doing great. How about you? How are you doing?

Jessica: I’m doing good. I’ve been in [unintelligible 00:01:52] Purgatory. I’m not Catholic. I don’t know anything about Purgatory, but it feels like this might be it. [laughs] That quote you shared with Vampire Weekend, I think you said the slow click of a ticking clock, reminds me of something I heard recently about– It’s been stuck in my mind about how the days are long, but the years are short. I don’t remember where I heard that from, but it’s in reference to the slow click of a ticking clock, even though we constantly feel a little bit rushed, but it’s easy to ignore certain things like relationship building or one of my favorite quotes from Chad Littlefield, connection before content.

It’s easy to forget that connection part because we have the clock ticking, but the days are long, and the years are short. If we keep ignoring day to day that bit of connection, I think that years later, you find that, when you’re trying to collaborate with these people or whatever, it could be a little bit more difficult because you’ve never really established those relationship. One of my favorite things to do, which is thought partnering with somebody, somebody just contacts you in your network and says, “I just need to think through something. Will you help me do that?” I get so energized by that. I got to do that this week.

I’m helping a colleague out with a project that they’re working on that involves lots of public input and inclusive public input. I just really enjoyed spending that time partnering with them on that. Every time I was sharing something, I’m like, “I’m so sorry, I’m making this more complex.” They’re like, “That’s great.” I love complexity. I don’t like complications, but I love complexity. It was just fun. It doesn’t bother me if they don’t use any of my ideas, but they’re very enthusiastic about them. That’s all I need. I just need an ego boost a little, I guess. I also know that when I need a thought partner, I can call them, too. I get really excited about that and inspired by it.

Bob: That’s awesome. You’re a great thought partner. I can speak from experience. I said that to someone recently, too. We were talking about something. I’m like, “I’m sorry. I just keep making this more complex.”

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Bob: Maybe that is helpful in thought partnering sometimes anyway. Maybe it’s also helpful if someone tells you, “What I need right now from you, thought partner, is to simplify things a little bit and provide some focus.”

Jessica: Then I’m like, “You came to the wrong thought partner.”

Bob: Exactly. “We’ll find someone else for you.”

Jessica: We’d love to hear what’s inspiring our listeners. Please share what’s inspiring you by clicking the Send Us a Text message at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open, and you’ll see a seven-digit number and the words Do Not Remove. Type your message after that and click send. Don’t remove that number, or we won’t receive your message.

To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number, and we can’t text you back, but we’ll share your feedback on a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnectionatoneop.org. Let us know what’s inspiring you now.

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Jessica: All right, let’s learn more about balancing the big picture and the small. Bob, can you tell us a little more about the practice you’ll be sharing, and why you chose it?

Bob: Sure. As we’re recording this, we’re in the midst of the 2024 OneOp Military Family Readiness Academy, which is titled Economic Readiness and Military Family Well-being. In the self-paced course and in the live events that we’ve had as part of the Academy, we’ve been learning a lot about some of the frameworks that can help us understand economic readiness.

The social ecological model or frameworks can really help us understand the complex interplay between individuals and their environment, which is very helpful. They remind us that everything is connected, that economic readiness, for example, is not just about an individual’s financial knowledge or behavior. There are various interconnected factors at the individual interpersonal community and societal level that influence financial readiness and all kinds of other issues. I would say almost all human issues are influenced by a lot of complex factors. These frameworks are definitely important, but they also can make us feel a little helpless.

Recognizing the complexity of an issue can make it difficult to see how we might make any difference at all or make any change at all. With all of these factors at play, we might just start to think, how can my actions have an impact on this huge issue? I think it can take some reflection and practice to find the balance in the big picture and the small, to acknowledge that an issue is complex and understand that and bring that to our work, but still sustain the belief that we can make a difference.

Jessica: Yes, you and I have dedicated our careers to being in both the big picture and the small. I’ll say that when I was in school for my master’s program, I had a really hard time understanding that I couldn’t save the world with my master’s thesis, that I could only take the tiniest little biteable bite out of understanding the issue. It took me a bit to get that. When you’re ready for action, and you’re fired up, you really want to make a difference. It can feel a little disheartening to know that it’s a much bigger, more complex issue. Let’s get started. You have some insights and questions to share that can help us balance the big picture with the small. Please walk us through that.

Bob: I’d love to. First of all, much of what I know about finding the balance between the big picture and the small, between complexity and individual action comes from Adrienne Maree Brown’s book Emergent Strategy. I highly recommend reading it, first of all. Adrienne draws on the work of Octavia Butler and Grace Lee Boggs and Margaret Wheatley and others to write about how the idea of emergence can inform our individual and collective action to address the issues we face in our communities and in the world. I’m going to talk about emergence for a second, but I also want to say a lot of this is out there and in the ether.

What Adrienne is able to do is to express it in a way that we can put it into practice through emergent strategy. What is emergence? Nick Obolensky defines emergence as the way complex systems and patterns arise out of the multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Short-order, complex systems arise out of lots of different stuff that is related, lots of different actions that are all related. I find that definition alone helpful in trying to find balance between the big and the small because it connects those two things, the systems and the interactions.

If complex systems arise from simple interactions, changing those simple interactions will change the system. Maybe that change will not be detectable in the short term, the medium term, or even in the span of a human life. In the framework of emergence, it will make a difference by definition. That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Devine Carama, who said, “It is hubris to expect to see the benefits of our leadership within our lifetime or the impact of our leadership within our lifetime.”

That speaks to that. We are making change all the time through our actions, but I think what affects our ability to see the balance is that we want to see the system, the big change happen too fast. We might not be able to see that. Accepting that I think is really important. Here’s a passage from Adrienne Maree Brown’s book, Emergent Strategy, that I find really helpful to meditate on. If you have a meditation practice, you could repeat it to yourself when you meditate. If not, you could put it on a Post-it, use it as a prompt in your journal, or just think about it when you’re feeling maybe a little overwhelmed or helpless in the face of complexity.

Here’s the quote. “Nothing is required of me more than being and creating, simultaneously being present with who I am, who we are as a species and creating who we must become, and within that, who I must become.” I’m going to repeat that. “Nothing is required of me more than being and creating, simultaneously being present with who I am, who we are as a species and creating who we must become, and within that, who I must become.” If this feels too big for you, you can shorten it to something like, “Nothing is required of me more than being and creating who I must become.”

The key here is to take time to reflect on both the complexity and the interconnectedness of the issues we face, and on yourself as the creator of the simple interactions that give rise to that complexity and interconnectedness. You can zoom out to see the community, the species, the universe that you are a part of, and you can zoom in to see yourself, the difference you’re making, and even the multitude of cells that make up your body and the microorganisms that live in you and on you. I hope you’ll take time to reflect on that, and I hope it helps.

Bob: Thank you so much for guiding us through that. It reminds me a little bit, and it makes sense. You mentioned that some of the work comes from Margaret Wheatley’s influence as well, but it reminds me of the islands of sanity that Margaret Wheatley talks about, how we can create our own islands of sanity in the middle of the complexities. Thanks so much for guiding us through that. I love that. I will definitely go back and listen and think about it and meditate on it.

Jessica: Thanks for the opportunity to share it.

Bob: That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for applying systems thinking to local efforts. Until then, keep practicing.

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Speaker: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, U.S. Department of Defense, under award number 2023-48770-41333.

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