Finding the Big Picture

Finding the Big Picture
by Bud Malmsten

Could this really happen?

For this six-month anniversary column I want to rehash the whole idea of "Intentional Misunderstanding."

But first, a story. I don't know if this really happened, but if it happened, it happened just like this. By the way if the names, Bubba and Billy Bob, offend you, substitute Sven and Ole, or Ike and Mike, or Mary and Jane, or Levi and Abraham, or Number Two and Number Three, or... you pick 'em.

A fellow stopped at a rural gas station. While the gas was pumping, he checked his oil and cleaned his windows. He noticed a couple of men working along the roadside.

One man was digging a hole two or three feet deep. When he finished digging, the man paced off several long steps and started digging another hole. Just as far back there was another hole, but something strange was happening: another man was filling it up.

This deserved some investigation. As the fellow looked back along the road, he saw a freshly dug and filled hole about every fifty feet. He couldn't believe his eyes!

While one was digging a new hole, the other was about fifty feet behind filling in the old. The men worked right past the fellow at the gas pump and went on down the road. He went in to pay his bill and get a soft drink for his journey, came out and stood by his car watching the dig/fill process advance fifty feet further.

"I can't stand this," said the man, tossing the can in a trash container, heading down the road toward the men. "Hold it, hold it," he said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on here with this digging?"

"Well, we work for the county," one of the men said.

"But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up. You're not accomplishing anything. Aren't you wasting the county's money?"

"You don't understand, mister," one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. "Normally there's three of us ... me, Billy Bob and Bubba. I dig the hole, Billy Bob sticks in the tree, and Bubba here puts the dirt back.

"Now just because Billy Bob's sick, it don't mean that Bubba and me can't work." [ba-da---ching!]

So, what does this have to do with "Intentional Misunderstanding"? This story represents nothing but pure ignorance, right? Well, perhaps.

Introducing the concept of Intentional Misunderstanding as the basis of all political dialog, I wrote in September, "Notice how each side of any issue must first understand clearly what the other side says, and means. Then they find some piece to lift out of its context and blow it all out of proportion, all to make their own position the only logical conclusion."

A reader responded with this suggestion: "This is very true, although I wonder if it can't still be done without really understanding what the opposition is saying in the first place? Seems to me that ignorance often plays a role when ideas are pulled out of context and distorted."

Ignorance does indeed explain Intentional Misunderstanding, especially when one notices that the root form of the word is ignore!

Now, back to the story. It is remotely possible that the two men doing the dig-a-hole/fill-a-hole dance actually did not grasp that the purpose of digging and filling was really the planting of trees. But I am suspicious that they were actually practicing Intentional Misunderstanding. They had determined that it was not their responsibility to pick up Billy Bob's part and fulfill the purpose of the assignment.

So what does this all have to do with real life? These two men represent a large segment of our culture whose response to questions reflects some variation of "That's not my department," or "I don't do..." or "My job description doesn't include..."

Remember the story of the workers performing identical tasks at a work-site? Asked what they were doing, one replied, "I am laying bricks." Another said, "I am making $25.00 an hour." A third said, "I am building a Cathedral where people will one day come to worship God."

A final thought: Anyone's job satisfaction ratio will be in direct proportion to the extent that person can move away from the "dig-a-hole/fill-a-hole /laying bricks" syndrome toward the "planning trees/building a Cathedral" perspective.

Find the big picture in what you do.