I have a problem. I have too many pictures. I do love digital photography, but with the size of the files, and no longer paying for film...it's getting a little out of hand.
But's it's not just the ease of taking pictures that's led me to hard drives full of pictures.
I think some of it is an attempt to preserve what we know is passing quickly. I'm very attuned to how fleeting and precious these particular days of life with my family are. Summer makes it worse. I'm even more aware, even hyper-focused on the passage of time.
As I was I taking yet another picture of my kids on the beach at sunset, I wondered to myself:
"Is a photograph an attempt to deny the passage of time?"
Do we try to fool ourselves into believing that we actually can stop a precious moment and capture it? Sunset photos tend to disappoint me - you just can't capture the majesty of that light and those colors. Even really good photographs of other life events, never fully capture the experience of being there. The pictures are a nice reminder, but no matter how hard we try, we can't re-live those beautiful moments of our lives in the way we would like. Writing this on September's eve, I'm aware of how futile it is to cling to precious time.
And as I've started to live more of my life in the present moment, I've become aware of how bittersweet human existence is.
Even those moments of great joy and happiness that we experience are tinged by a sadness, because we know they are fleeting. Try as we might, we cannot cling to our happiness anymore than we can stop a handful of sand from slipping through our fingers. And the more we awaken to life as it is, we are aware of this tragedy - that life's beauty is momentary and passing. That when we find ourselves in a state of bliss, we are soon brought into grieving for its loss, knowing that we can't actually preserve those precious moments.
I think it might be that all of life is to some degree bittersweet by nature - if we are fully awake - fully aware of the passage of time and this endless cycle of joy and loss.
Is this why so many of us have these compulsive behaviours - pursuing relentlessly pleasure and happiness, always trying to capture or recreate the past joys, avoiding the grief and acknowledgment that those moments are gone? Avoiding the reality that happiness cannot be maintained by denial or creating a false sense of our ability to preserve it? Avoiding acknowledging that sorrow and suffering will always return? Refusing to accept that the essence of all human happiness is a bittersweetness because joy is so precious and evasive?
How much of our lives are constructed around trying to create and re-create happiness, fooling our selves that we can even pursue it, let alone capture it or preserve it?
Like so much else that is broken in our culture, we have created expectations for people of their own happiness. Expectations that are unrealistic and unsatisfiable - two ideal conditions for motivating people to produce and consume. But these false expectations of happiness seem to keep us only busily trapped in our own pursuit, hardly able to recognize or enjoy those things that might bring joy around us.
It is painful to acknowledge the bittersweet quality of life. I think it is worse to remain caught in relentless pursuit of things that can't be preserved.
Maybe it's not about too many or too few pictures. Maybe it's about what I'm trying to accomplish with my shutter fetish. As I wake up to the bittersweet quality of life, I realize that pictures in themselves are a joy, but like most technology, it mustn't be allowed to fool me into thinking I am anything but fully human, and fully trapped in the passage of a universe in constant flux.
I'm wondering if happiness is more about what we find in the present moment around us, rather than what we create. If I tell myself that I will be happier when I'm on a beach with people I love, listening to music and the surf, the temptation to cling to that moment when it arrives will be so strong, but also increase the sadness of its passage. If I tell myself I can only be happy in that situation, I think I will find myself more desperately trying to create the "right" conditions, and unhappy all the other times that I am not there. If on the other hand I merely open myself to what joys might be around me and take pleasure in that, there is so much less to be clung to or feared for its loss. I'm not trying to suggest we can escape the bittersweet of life, but it seems that the great wisdom traditions of our world suggest we will suffer less if cling less. That happiness will evade us if we make it our goal, and find us if we care more for others.
So I don't know if I'll take fewer pictures. But I'm definitely more aware of my relationship to pictures and what significance they might have to me. They cannot preserve the un-preservable. Instead, I'm here now. Writing this blog on my front porch on a warm August evening while my children sleep peacefully. I'm enjoying the creative process as something inside of me, perhaps even deep longings, find their way into words. And perhaps these words will open some new small part of the world for you as you read it.
The thought of that brings me a passing happiness.
