Week Twenty-One: Take a Picture of Something Beautiful

Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.

— Aaron Siskind

I’m one of those people who take photos of everything. If I want to remember a person, a place, a street sign, or the feeling of a particular cup of coffee, I’ll take a picture of it. I take pictures of flowers to capture their ephemeral beauty; I take pictures of delicious meals that I’m proud of; I take pictures of the people I love doing the things they love. 

I collect pictures like I collect memories. I don’t do much with them once they’re taken, I just keep them tucked away for some later, undetermined use. Sometimes I’ll look at an old picture and wonder why I took it, but more often I’ll see it and instantly recall a place, a moment, or a feeling. Perhaps I’m trying to preserve a sensation, or maybe I’m afraid of losing something; the more likenesses I create, the longer that object, instant, or person exists in the world.

Someone asked me a question this week that made me consider why I take so many photos. “Are you afraid of having children because you’re afraid of leaving them, like your mother left you when she died?” Without missing a beat I said “No, I’m not afraid, because I already know what I can leave for my children that I didn’t have; I can give them thousands of pictures of their parents when they were young, and I can make sure they have people to talk to and stories to hear about who their parents were as people.”

This is why I try to preserve the beauty that surrounds me and this is why I take pictures of my husband when he’s not looking. I cherish the pictures I have of my Mum and there are many, but she lived and died in a time before the Cloud and cellphone camera rolls with thousands of pictures. I have more pictures of our family dog than I have of her. My Mum also died suddenly, giving no one who knew her time to prepare or time to collect the pieces of her that my sister and I will spend the rest of our lives looking for. Maybe I’ll never look at the photos I collect and maybe they won’t mean much to me. But maybe someday, the curiosity, the peace, the joy, and the beauty will mean something to someone else.

Interestingly, I shared this conversation with my husband who then proceeded to tell me that for nearly a decade, he has been taking candid photos of me without me knowing.

Each day this week I set out to take a picture of something beautiful. Sometimes I captured pure, undeniable beauty. Sometimes I captured beauty in fear, beauty in decay, or beauty in struggle. Sometimes I preserved a feeling or a memory. Sometimes I just took pictures of flowers. This week I found happiness not only by intentionally seeking out beauty every day, but by looking for beauty in everything I saw. Instead of continuing to overthink it, I’ll just leave the photos here, to share the beauty and the Happiness.

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Sources

45 Things You Can Do to Get Happy No Matter Where You Are
Courtney Johnston | @CourtRJ | ( http://www.rulebreakersclub.com/) on Lifehack.org