Why is it that we are constantly misled into thinking big problems need big solutions?

All our lives, we're taught that big problems call for big solutions. The more complex an issue, the more people – and the more money – that should be involved in finding a way out of it, whatever “it” may be. We're led to believe big important problems need big important names, big important ideas, and big important titles that are usually in the form of a witty acronym (the Milk Income Loss Contract Program for dairy farmers, abbreviated MILC, comes immediately to mind).

But all this “big” talk, to me, seems like a misconception. Arguably, it may even be one of the ideas holding us, our nation, our culture and our community, back. It’s no surprise that big solutions are often costly, complex and yet, for some reason, they're still favored by the masses, meaning they're usually implemented but eventually fail.

Perhaps big problems don't need big solutions so much as they need simple or creative ones. Maybe the reason so many solutions hit a stone wall, from the problems of Congress to our own local social-political issues, is that they fall victim to over-thinking (and overfunding). Maybe part of the problem is that the people with authority to solve big problems – be it a social, political or anything in between – have too big a budget and they look for ways to use that big budget. In a perfect world, there would be a perfect correlation between outcome and the amount of time and money invested in addressing an issue, but that's simply not the case. And this is far from a perfect world. Maybe it should be the people with extremely limited resources who should be responsible to find solutions.

I like to use pet therapy as an example; pets in nursing homes, in particular. Research studies have shown the benefits of having pets available to nursing home residents time and again. Just the presence of a dog perks the spirits of elderly residents, which has an impact on their overall health. Over the years, it's a method proven to be a relatively simple solution to a complex problem - and it's a far cheaper solution than investing in medical technology and research (after all, not every ailment needs a prescription, despite what hundreds of pharmaceutical television advertisements say).