The bigger picture....

We are all searching for the truth. An honest answer. A simple explanation. But what we forget is that often there is none to be had. Answers are often not simple and direct. 

Events are a result of causal chain of events - one leading to another while we are only able to catch a snap-shot of it at one finite moment. Science and scientists have understood this inherent defect with our mode of study. We know that we are limited by only being able view snap-shots of a disease in a progress or of the life of a cell. And so we have struggled to put together a story based on vignettes here and there adding in our own intelligent speculation. As we do this, we narrow down the variables and focus on the minutiae. 

We stare down at a microscope and tear apart a problem to its smallest parts. To the tiniest, tangible parts that we can intelligently handle and comprehend. To parts that can be individually tampered with, studied, modified, understood and exploited. So we understand truth one experiment at a time. We paint our pictures, one pixel at a time. But life is not really waiting for us to complete our experiments and paint our pictures. 

We keep working and looking under a microscope and ever so often, we need a reminder. A reminder to the fact that we are only looking at one flower, in a big garden of flowers, in a big city, in a big country and all of this in one big universe. It helps to stop once in a while just to step back from our microscopes as we dissect every truth, every statement and every answer to just see a bigger picture. A bigger picture, where we are all the part of one big whole. A whole where progress in one stimulates progress in another and knowledge in one leads to more questions in another. A whole, where understanding the past is as helpful as imagining and creating the future.

And this is why, I often feel like slipping into the folds of history. In fact, as the years have passed, my fascination with history has grown steadily. From a clear and unequivocal dislike to the subject to tolerance, to curiosity, to fascination and to a strong interest now, I have grown to love the past. Nothing seems to make sense except in the light of history. I could sound anachronistic when I say this because talking of the past when people are building humanoids does seem like a sacrilege but If asked today, I'd much rather spend my time reading history than futuristic science fiction. Every one of the books I have read that have detailed the origin and development of a field have made me realize that one needs to look at a bigger picture, the whole story. One needs to step back from the microscope to see the world as it was and is. And that is the only view that can show us our blind spots and our prejudices and open our eyes to new facts which we had ignored for so long. 

In life too, as in science, one needs to step away from the details and minutiae of everyday living to look at the bigger picture. A whole where stepping away from the microscope only shows us how grainy our pixels looked up close, but with millions like those, our picture is not all that bad. A picture where we can count our "blessings" and thank our failures for the lessons we learnt.  A picture where we can view our lives in third person in addition to living them in the first person. Where we can be objective about our past simply because we are removed from it and because we have seen that what seemed like a catastrophe was actually a blessing in disguise. Sometimes, this understanding takes years to come because I still rue many things in my past... but I don't stop looking. Looking for that one clue that would make sense of it all. That would show me that things, for what they were, have only left me better and stronger !