I always get mixed feelings when taking or ordering photographs. Life is so short and next generations are so removed that a picture seems pretty unimportant. The highlight of every picture’s life is the time when it is taken and developed, and it’s all downhill from there. It is stuck in a dusty album, viewed 5 times in its lifetime and thrown out after people on the photograph have passed on.
And as I continue thinking about life being short and things being temporary, most possessions loose meaning. And I start understanding what Buddhists say about striving not to want anything as being path to happiness. It’s not that you teach yourself not to care about something you want otherwise, it’s about understanding that you really don’t need those temporary things and therefore not caring for having them. If you have something - be happy, if you don’t have it - be happy too. Because if you had it, it would only be for a short time anyway, so what does it matter. And this doesn’t mean that you need to wear old clothes, live in a horrible looking house and not comb your hair. To me it means not stressing out of your mind to get something you do not yet have, not stretching yourself thin to get something because you want it so much that your stomach is all nuts and not being afraid to loose what you have. Not being afraid to loose what you have is the difficult one, isn’t it? Although everything will be lost eventually one way or another, letting go is still hard to do. Yet it might be the path to true happiness. Let go and be happy with whatever comes our way.
1 comment:
You raise two interesting points in your post Masha. As to the pictures, since life is about experiencing - pictures are just reference points that bring you back to that experience. I know that when I see a photo of me in a place I relive that moment. When I hear a song I heard when I was a child I go back to that time. Therefore I think pictures are for you not necessarily for others although I love looking at photos of my parents when they were young because I never knew them at that age and will never discard of them.
As to the topic of having...that is a tasty subject. My opinion coincides with yours that we don't really have anything and poccession of something is temporary and an illusion. Thus striving for having it is wasted effort unless the lesson itself is in showing you that. It is nevertheless hard especially in our society that teaches us about poccession, i.e. my toys, my house, my food, my wife, etc. It is very psychologically difficult to let go. But we are being guided even in such phrases as ....if you Love it let it go and if it comes back to you it is meant to be with you in the first place...which to me signifies that we are together not by force but by free will and this applies to all things in life. If we learn that we do not own things we have no thing to loose and that can help us be more heartfull.
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