Pictures are an awkward thing. Some believe that a picture plucks part of your soul away from you when it flashes at you. Others think that a picture can paint a thousand words. I think that pictures are a lovely keepsake to remember the good times in your life. Any angle you look at it from, pictures are a powerful, yet awkward thing, and here's why.
I took my senior pictures this past week. I am no model (however I have been offered a runway job... long story) but I assumed that the pictures went well. The photographer posed me in front of a myriad of different places and flashed a bunch of pictures. While we did this, I couldn't help but wonder if we put way too much flack on models for their shallowness and stupidity. I learned something, though, in the hour of picture taking I attended- modeling is not just easy, but involves nothing more than one's own beauty and fleshly desires. It is a piece of cake with very little involved in the process so yes, they are shallow primadonnas.
However, here I was, taking these pictures. I was really excited about taking them because it would make me officially a senior in high school and plus, it isn't something you get to do every day. While we were outside taking pictures around town, the weather started to grow dark and eerie and the wind started to pick up. I thought, "Great, the beauty of the day is gone and now my pictures are going to turn out shoddy because the stupid weather is picking up." Ah, but I was wrong. You see, the wind that was blowing out of control and the stormy skies above only allowed the photographer to paint a better picture with her camera. She used the scene to make the pictures come out with more drama, more pizazz. She used the wind that was fighting against us to better ourselves.
Now as a writer at heart, I was reminded of a bunch of other stories like this one. If you want to hear my favorite version of this story, go to (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpKmFuOpshk). It is a long story, but worth the 8 minutes. If you don't decide to check out the video, let me just sum it up by saying that you'll find my story not unlike others stories. But the point of this post isn't to state something new, but to remind us all of an important lesson in loving life.
Life's perspective isn't created by the circumstances around us, but by the eyes we choose to look out of them. I wonder how many times we have issues in our life where we just cannot see the beauty of it. I have heard many people refer to these moments as storms in their life, which always catches my attention. I love storms. I think rain is magnificent, lightning is gorgeous, thunder is powerful- I just love a good storm. It made me realize that we can choose to look with our own eyes and see the destruction and chaos of our situations, or we can look out of the eyes of the photographer and see the art thereof. Now, if you know me, you would know that I am the worlds most pessimistically cynical optimist, and I am not asking you to put on a smiley face and get on with your day. Instead, I dare you to look back and see the painting in a fuller, more broad scale. Paintings aren't always so cheerful and brightening as we may want them to be, but they always have a way of showing how tasteful the artist was when they painted the picture.
Some of the greatest pieces of art are pictures of sadness or pain. However, the most beautiful of scenes history has ever given us was upon the hill of Golgotha, upon a splintery, wooden cross. It wasn't fun, happy, rejoicing at the time, nor what the onlookers would have painted. But it was beautiful and that was the point. So here is to your week. May you look through the camera of the master artist and see the beauty in the storm.
KB
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