“He can’t see the forest for the trees,” was how a friend of mine described a mutual acquaintance. I thought at the time that the sentence described me and many others at one time or another. It is easy to be so caught in the details that are right in front of us that we lose our perspective of the big picture. Part of the problem is our differing skills. Some of us are excellent at handling the details of life while others are good at seeing the broader implications of events and experiences. It is a rarer thing to find people who combine both gifts. It is one of the many reasons why we need each other. We supplement each other’s gifts. A group with wide angle thinkers may have trouble moving beyond theory to practical action, while a group of detail thinkers may be in danger of forgetting what the day to day work does to realize our greater purposes. It can also be the case that the two styles may not understand or fully appreciate the contributions of the other style. A group is fortunate if it has those who can interpret and enable us all to work together. We always need to be sure that we are tending to both the trees and the forest.