DAY 13 – LOOKING AT LIFE HOLISTICALLY

I am attending a community meeting about ideas citizens have for the future of their town. The discussions that are flowing back and forth have no cohesiveness to them. Each idea and topic is being looked at in isolation and shows little or no integration with other ideas or topics.

Nothing in life is as simple as everything standing by itself. No event or situation is completely separate from other events or situations. The idea that this directly caused that and that directly caused this does not apply. There are many interconnected layers to what occurs in human affairs.

It dawned on me that life is more than the individual things that we do but is a compilation of everything we do. The whole is made up of its parts and by looking at life one issue at a time does not give us a true description of what is actually occurring.

It would be nice if we could make life simplistic. When one thing happens it results in a predicted and specific outcome. Neither any individual person or society as a whole can do that.

To get a better handle on what is going on we need to look at life as holistically as possible. We need to understand the individual parts of life and how they are integrated together in their complexities and the depth of those connections. Without an understanding of how things are interconnected mistakes will be made because important aspects will be left out of the equation. If we want to make proper assessments about events and situations that lead to better decisions on how to conduct our affairs we need as much information as possible.

After leaving the meeting I now realize that without a holistic understanding about life I leave important components and factors out of my analysis. The more information I have the better my decisions become on how to make my life better and to make this a better world for everyone.