I'm working on a big, but secret project (it's for a swap. The swap is to 'go' the middle to end of February). I'm starting to get concerned about getting the project done, so I broke down how many rows (based on the row gauge) I have left. If I average seven rows a day, I should be able to finish it well on time. If I can do more than that, even better.

So it's going to be like New Rule (which I have to re-institute at work - start doing the hour-a-day of research work, data analysis, or reading).

There's an old saying: inch by inch, it's a cinch; yard by yard, it's hard.

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And that saying is actually not all that unrelated to my other topic.

Yesterday, Lynn referred to another blog, talking about "lumpers" or "splitters." I am very familiar with this terminology from taxonomy (I tend to be a "lumper," myself. If two plants occupy the same niche, look a lot alike, and can apparently interbreed, why do they have to be defined as different species? [Sometimes I suspect the answer is "to get a journal publication for someone"]).

However, the person also extends the analogy to 'real life' - that people who ask the "big picture" questions (about global politics, climate change...and on up, they suggest that the question of God is the biggest "big picture" question) are lumpers, and the people who tend to focus more on their own gardens are "splitters."

(And I'm trying really hard not to take offense, or not to see patronization where it may not be occurring, but I almost get a hint of the "bless their hearts, but..." about the "splitters.")

I don't really think the analogy fits. Lumpers, taxonomically, are people who want to make fewer but larger categories. Splitters want to make more, smaller categories. I'm not sure how choosing to focus on life going on right around you vs. the wider world necessarily shoehorns perfectly into that.

I have been trying to think of other ways of defining it. Outward vs. inward focused? (That fits, but as someone who would rather look at her own garden - or her own mantel - than contemplate what I too often interpret as the overwhelming inhumanity of man to other man in the wider world, claiming to be "inward focused" to me sounds too much like being self-absorbed. And heck, maybe I am. I don't know).

I don't think Foxes vs. Hedgehogs exactly fits either (though I will note with amusement, that if that were true, then there is ONE way I could validly claim myself to be a "fox." Ba-dum-ching.)

And extravert and introvert don't work, either: I've known people defined as extraverts who are awfully focused on the minutiae of their lives, and introverts who are deeply concerned about the wider world.

I guess I can only fall back on explaining what I know, what my personal position is:

I tend to focus on the small things of life. As was famously said at the end of Candide, "Il faut cultiver nos jardins". I tend to feel that attending to my own "garden," so to speak, works better for me - and keeps me saner - than trying to focus too much on the greater reality.

I've spoken in the past about having to stop myself from watching the news. I get too upset sometimes, I get to feeling that the human race is just about to crack itself in a million pieces and that we will enter a bad new world where civility is dead and selfishness reigns. Or that natural disasters (and "man-made disasters") are so overwhelming, that they lead me to question.

(One of the big questions I try not too hard to address, because I cannot come up with a satisfactory answer: "how can there be a loving God if stuff like this still happens?")

Part of the problem, and I know this sounds a bit like bragging on the nobility of my personality, and really, I'm trying to make it be NOT, because there are a lot of not-so-noble things in my personality, is that I am a bit of a control freak, and my Meyers-Briggs personality type is sometimes referred to as the "Counselor."

I want to fix things. I want to make things better. And in a big way. There have been times I've been sitting relaxing, knitting or reading a magazine, and gone to myself, "Why are you doing this? You are wasting the life you have been given. You should be out trying to make the world a better place." And if I do that to myself too much, I get really sad and really dissatisfied with myself.

So I find that ratcheting down my focus helps. Reminding myself that I can't fix everything. I can do SOME things: I have enough ready funds that I can donate to a reputable group when something happens. I can do little stuff like pick up trash in my town. I can do my best as a teacher so that students will go off into the world equipped to do whatever it is they need to do...especially if they are going to go and become (as one of my former students hopefully will) doctors that then go back to their impoverished home-countries and try to set up clinics to help people.

So maybe if I can't directly "fix" things, I can comfort myself that in some way, I am second-hand fixing.

But I do find the big questions overwhelm me sometimes.

I think also it has to do with one's temperament: do you like argument or not? I definitely do not like argument, I tend to be more of a Code of the Schoolyard #3 person (I definitely don't agree with #2, and there are times when I wouldn't agree with #1).

I knew someone once who lived to debate, to discuss, to argue. I found this person exhausting to be around, because they would disagree with you about EVERYTHING. I wanted to sit this person down, and say, "Look. You may not understand this, but there are some of us who make conversation to feel connected, not to do the mental equivalent of sharpening our claws on the couch. When I say that the weather's nice lately, that's not an opening gambit; it's a bit of small-talk that really only requires a response in the affirmative, or, at the most a "yes, but I actually like it a bit warmer than this." You don't need to debate people on everything they say; most of us don't walk around with that kind of mental armament."

But I never did, because I was sure it would invite another argument. (And I also admit that I often felt that this person felt that I wasn't too bright - or more likely, that I was bright enough but was being intellectually lazy because I didn't feel the need to turn everything into a deep discussion).

I don't know. I guess I tend to feel happier upon finding that another person and I share something in common - whether it's an opinion or an experience - than I do in having to back up everything I say, justify every statement.

(I remember when I was first starting my Master's thesis research, my advisor sent one of my labmates out with me to do some field work. I barely knew the guy and, as is typical of people I barely knew, I was kind of uncomfortable at first. We were collecting soil samples - it was a crummy, stony soil, and he pulled up a sample with a large rock in it. He muttered,

"What did you get, Charlie Brown?"
"I got a rock."

quoting the old Peanuts Halloween special. And I laughed. From that moment, we had something in common - something we could discuss and laugh about. It was at that point that I realized, "Hey, he and I might be able to be friends." And we were. )

So I guess I'm more about trying to find connections - trying to make myself feel like I'm not-so-weird in this world, like I'm not so much a stranger in a strange land. Maybe the people who are the big debaters are people who most of the time feel more comfortable in their milieu than I do.

(Interestingly: one of the places where I do feel more comfortable in my milieu - and feel more comfortable discussing "bigger" questions - is in the grown-up Sunday School class I am a part of. So maybe there is something to the idea of how comfortable you feel among a group of people and how much you are willing to discuss the "big ideas.")

But otherwise, what I am doing with my "here is this thing I made" or my "here are my thoughts on a book I read" or "here is an experience I had," is an attempt to make a connection - sort of unfurling a little flag that says "I exist, and I feel this way" and hoping that someone else will unfurl one that says "and I understand you." Because that's really one of the things I want most: to be understood.

So I don't know. Maybe the dichotomy isn't so much "lumper" and "splitter" as it is people who want to understand the world vs. people who want to be understood by the world? Or people who interact on the basis of what they think vs. people who interact on the basis of how they feel? (And ugh, I feel bad thinking that. I want to be a thinker, really, but I guess I am more of a feeler. Somehow it seems more intelligent and mature to be a thinker in that sense). Or maybe people who are secure in who they are versus people who need reassurance? I don't know.