I’ll be honest. There’s a lot about these past several months that have felt like a swift kick to the gut. Maybe it’s because Monday marks that day that my family and I were supposed to board a plane for Hawaii - a vacation that had been planned for over a year. We are not in Hawaii. We are not watching our kids play in the warm water. We are here. And I’m trying to allow myself to sit with this feeling that I often try to brush past, perhaps a bit too quickly. The pain of reality. The reality is that my son will not have a Kindergarten graduation this year. The reality is that my daughter left her first year of preschool one day, with no idea that she wouldn’t see her friends or her teachers for the remainder of the year. If I’m also honest, there is a lot of beauty that has unfolded during these past few months as well. However, I think often I don’t allow myself to feel the uncomfortable feeling of pain. When those feelings surface, it creates a kind of inner conflict that I’m wildly uncomfortable with. What follows is usually one of two things: I either feel guilty for not being more grateful for all the things in my life that are good and beautiful, or I brush right past the pain to get to the good. Is that just me or is that my peacemaker-nine-on-the-enneagram showing itself again?
There are a lot of great things about social media. However, I think that one of its greatest downfalls is the tendency we have to measure our worth by scrolling down and seeing squares of people living their best lives. We often see only the good and I know for myself, this often can lead to the downward spiral of comparison. Why doesn’t my life look like that? Why am I not creating a schedule of events that perfectly balances learning and play for my kids each day? Why am I not using this time of quarantine to do something more fruitful? My response is often to wait until I too feel like I have something exceptional to share. I think that this can further lead me avoid sitting with the things that don’t seem like they belong on the happy squares of social media, as well as to let all other great moments that are full of beauty and just short of exceptional, pass me by.
Here’s the thing…life is both breathtakingly beautiful and heart wrenchingly painful. The beautiful makes the pain more real and the pain makes the beauty more true. To live in one of those two extremes is to live a sort of one dimensional life that doesn’t serve myself or others well. I know that having this time with my kids at home is a rare and precious gift that I will never get back. Watching my kids play together for hours on end and watching their relationship deepen when they are usually apart most of the day, makes my heart so full. However, I also know that not having an ounce of time to myself has taken a toll on me that is real and true. I know that not seeing my clients and being able to use photography as a creative outlet as well as well as an extra source of income is hard. The elimination of all things “non-essential” has quieted the noise of distraction and allowed me to only see what remains. And while some of what remains is painful and hard, there sure are a lot of things that have always been here to take my breath away if only I had fixed my gaze for long enough to see them. And to feel the tension of all these things together is to feel alive.
So how to we hold both? You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? It’s the thing that constantly brings me back and grounds me. It’s the thing that allowed me to fall in love with photography: You slow and savor. You document. And whether that documentation for you looks like journaling, photography, creating, or any number of outlets, you let it linger long enough to get it all down. You feel the tension of both extremes without trying to dictate what the story looks like when you are all done. May we be a people who don’t see only the pain and who don’t rush too quickly into the beauty, but are able to hold space for both extremes and hold space for others to feel both extremes as well.
And to my clients who have turned into my friends - man, I miss you all! I can’t wait to get together again where I can document your family, comment on how big your kids have gotten, and catch up on life lived in between sessions. Meanwhile, I’ll just be here, reaching for my camera, even when I don’t really feel like it. May I point my lens to what resonates with me during this season - be it a thing of pain or a thing of beauty, and may it tell the story of a life lived to the fullest.
