something about seeing the forest and not the trees
1. METAPHOR GALORE!
A poetry professor of mine used to bark, “FIND THE METAPHORS IN YOUR LIFE!” He was obsessed with the notion that if certain metaphors kept popping into your life, there was a cosmic reason for it. I suppose he thought that the Poetry Gods were intentionally placing these symbols into your life as a way to force you to recognize the inter-connectedness of everything.
2. YEARLY REVIEW
Once upon a time, a boss of mine told me, during my yearly review, that my problem was that I “saw the trees and not the forest.”
Years later, I still take issue with my boss’s comment.
Slap my face and call me stupid…but isn’t a copyeditor’s job nothing if not hyper-focused on details?!?!? Wasn’t it my job to zone in on the one typographical error that all the other legions of editors hadn’t noticed?!?!? Wasn’t I PAID to see the trees?!?!
Apparently not.
I was fired.
3. GIMME AN AX
After class one day, I met up with a dear friend at a pub near the law school. I’m not sure if he could tell from the defeated look on my face, but I was very depressed about a mediocre grade I got on a paper.
He said, “Don’t worry. Just cut down one tree at a time.”
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
He continued.
“The way I see it, law school is a forest. We have all these big enormous trees before us and it’s our job to cut them down. One by one. You don’t have to worry about cutting down the entire forest. You aren’t expected to. No one has the time or the ability to cut down the entire forest. Just do it tree by tree.”
4. STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.
Slowly But Surely Chopping Trees like,
Me
