Transthought

Photographs and Emotions

Vacation photographs keep arriving online from family and friends. There are covered bridges, mountain views, fishing poles, swimming garb, park signs, and faces of children and adults in various places, doing various things. This online immediacy is startling, compared to the older times when we would have to wait until the folks returned from their exotic travels and get the film developed and sort out the good ones from the poorer ones, select those for reprints, etc. Now we see what they see even before they cease seeing it!

I like this immediacy when it helps foster positive feelings. I do not like it when it does the opposite. CNN, MSNBC and the other channels are using it these days to illustrate the horrors of war in the Middle East. Fires, destroyed buildings, people wailing, grief, pain everywhere. What to make of it? The happy scenes of nature's splendor, of family members having a relaxing happy time are contrasted with those of anguish and stress. Life asks a lot of us. It places us in positions to deal with the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the right and the wrong, and all the other contrasts and opposites that comprise our daily schedules. It is a wonder that we are not all mad as our common condition.

There is little I can do about the war, I suppose. I can discuss with my Jewish son, but that sometimes ends with unspoken words from both of us. And what does talking about it accomplish towards "doing something about it" anyway? We can talk about the weather, but what can we do? I can certainly enjoy the vacation pictures, and perhaps that is the best thing to do in the midst of the other. But does concentrating on the positive do anything at all to eliminate the negative? Evil happens when good people do nothing, it is said, but what specifically is there to do? Is not enjoying the vacation pictures a way of avoiding the troubesome? It is a dilemma that confronts us all.

So the weather continues, blazing hot today. The war continues, blazing fires today in Beirut and Haifa. The vacation continues and more pictures will arrive tomorrow, blazing campfires perhaps. Life is a series of the good and the bad, and much in between. My emotions will be pushed in this direction and that, and I shall survive them all. That is the way it has always been and that is the way it will be. Perhaps I am asked only to realize that I am capable of facing the whatevers and getting through them. It matters not whether the road be rough or smooth, only that I travel it with courage, strength and nobility.

Wayne's words for July 17, 2006

posted by Wayne Olson @ 9:49 AM