The Big Picture

I’ve always thought it was funny the way we always seem to notice the little things in a big picture. Maybe it’s because it’s too cliche to notice the obvious stuff, or maybe it’s just because we actually care about the little things that don’t seem to matter at all. I’m not exactly sure when I noticed that in just two years my sister was going to college across the country, but I do know that it hit me pretty hard. Being the worry-wart I am, I, naturally, worried about her plane crashing or something happening, and she wouldn’t make it to safety in time. Never did I once publicize the fact that these thoughts were constantly crossing my mind.

Frankly, I didn’t really want anyone to know. That was my business and my business only. I never thought about the fact that she would make tons of friends, get an excellent education, and play the sport she loves. Being myself, the only things I thought about were little things that in the back of my mind I knew wouldn’t really happen. My sister had always told me that I can’t go through life thinking hypothetically.

I mean, of course, she never said it exactly like that, but it was something that always went unspoken between us; or at least, that was what I thought. On another hand, I had always considered my sister perfect. I had my own definition of this term, and it was hard to fit. However, something kept telling me that she would make the right decisions. That was one less thing I had to worry about.

Once I really started thinking about everything, I never really noticed time passing by as quickly as everyone said it would. I had graduated seventh grade, her softball team won the state championship, and she got into the college of her dreams. A lot of huge milestones in our lives passed, but other than that, nothing else really happened before I entered the eighth grade. All the minor details suddenly didn’t matter to me. That was when, for the first time, I saw a difference between the “little things” and the “big picture.

” I had always worried, until then, something happening to her. I had cared about all the minorities. Then I realized, whether I liked it or not, the time was coming. She had to spread her wings and fly sometime. It was then the big picture mattered.

I saw things from a different view -a different perspective. After continuous, monotonous thinking and consideration, I decided that worrying about things that shouldn’t matter are what shaped me into who I am today. I had worried about my sister, and it was my sister who had helped me discover who I really was. To me, that took patience. Patience is a quality most people lack – a quality that taught me, after thinking, that in any situation, if you really love someone, it’s okay for the little things in the big picture to matter.