Yesterday a friend of mine shared something with me, mentioning this word, 格局 (gé jú). The first time I heard of this was long ago from a young relative of mine in China, who used it to describe her better half as having small 格局. Not good.
As a serious person, I tried to grasp the meaning of the term. On that I failed. I asked someone today and was told of something about planning or vision for the future.
From its Chinese characters, I understand it as encompassing the overarching box or structure or framework for understanding and interpreting the world. Simply put it, it is a way of thinking and explaining events around our lives.
From the way I understand, though I might run the risk of oversimplifying it, there's no big or small, good or bad 格局. There's only different framework of thinking and resulting in different consequences. While some are restrictive, some are mind-opening and liberating.
Different mindsets and different frameworks can have different impact on one's life and actions. A lawyer's framework is his law book, which is vastly different from that of a businessman. But we can’t apply a lawyer’s or businessman’s framework on everything in life.
What we need to be aware of is the restriction of our fixed thinking on our actions and our life as the whole. Most importantly, imagine how suffocating it is if we always think within a box! Perhaps having big 格局 is someone who can think out of the box or having many boxes.