All too often in small town circles, I think we forget to look at the big picture when we’re presented with a topic or an issue that sits on the local, provincial or national levels of interest.
It’s simply human nature to react to something that we hear and connect it to how *we’re* personally impacted by it, or else share our opinions and views on how it could/should impact others. But with the rise of social media in the last decade, it seems like everything you read these days is comprised of purely gut reactions to any and all sorts of topics and issues. We’ve lost the ability to see both sides of the equation and take a step back to look at what the big picture is showing us.
What I thought I’d do this week is present a number of local scenarios and state what I perceive to be the small picture stance taken by most people, and then share what I believe to be the big picture in the long run.
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Small Picture: The new swimming pool facility in Outlook won’t open until summer 2019, even though it could technically open this August, and the Town should’ve taken the necessary steps to ensure construction wasn’t delayed.
Big Picture: Mother Nature is mainly to blame for the pool not opening until next year, not anything the Town could’ve or should’ve done. Furthermore, there is still quite a void in the collective coffers as it pertains to fundraising for the new pool, and the time until next year should allow ample time to raise the necessary funds to pay the facility off. In the big picture, it’ll work out as being more beneficial to everyone involved if the Town waits until next year to open the facility because of the long length of the season and the possibility of having it paid off in full. (And just as a side note, please stop asking why the new pool isn’t in the park. It’s getting very tiresome and it’s common knowledge why a pool shouldn’t have even been built there to begin with.) -
Small Picture: Outlook High School organized an Anti-Gun Violence Walk this past Tuesday, and apparently to some on social media, the school should’ve focused their efforts more on other initiatives because gun violence “isn’t an issue” in small town Saskatchewan.
Big Picture: While gun violence may not be a hot-button issue in the province per say (unless you owned a farm near Biggar until 2016…), gun violence by itself IS a hot-button issue, and the fact that kids in small town Saskatchewan want to hold an event that sympathizes with the victims of said violence – prominently south of the border in the U.S. – and show their support is all kinds of incredible. Something doesn’t necessarily have to personally affect us here at home to show support or stand up for what’s right, and these students should be commended for showing this kind of initiative. -
Small Picture: A person from British Columbia was selected to receive the retail permit for selling marijuana and related products in Outlook, apparently taking away a job from a number of local business people who also had ideas for such a venture.
Big Picture: While the provincial government’s lottery apparently selected someone who isn’t “from around these parts” to receive the permit to operate a cannabis retail outlet in town, you have to realize that this person, Jean Paul Lim, apparently a ‘complex care specialist physician’ at the Cannabis Medical Centre based out of Vancouver, isn’t exactly going to pack up everything and move two provinces over to operate a small business in rural Saskatchewan. I can’t even count the number of emails and messages I received after it was announced who was receiving the permits for all these future retail outlets. And while I can understand the frustration of local entrepreneurs not being selected, once again, I think only the small picture is being looked at. The owner himself may not be local, but the owner *is* going to likely need a manager and a number of staff, so that’s going to be where local people interested in a ‘career with cannabis’ should direct their attention when the time comes that Dr. Lim is looking for a number of people to make up the staff of Outlook’s ‘pot shop’.
Feel free to agree or disagree with anything I’ve said here, but the fact remains that in this rush-rush, gut-reaction world we live in today, people generally need to take a step back and look at what the bigger picture might be in most situations.
We need to get better at seeing the forest for the trees.
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
