Keep Your Head Up

And take time to marvel and wonder.

I got quite a few accolades on Facebook for this picture after I shared it there.



I was very grateful for the praise, but don't know that I did much to deserve it. I was barely outside the day I took it because I was spending the day shepherding someone at the hospital. I just happened to be running a quick errand to the car in the parking garage, and when I walked out I saw this really cool sky and took a picture. It seems due to luck and happenstance more than anything.

Yet as I think about it, I didn't see anyone else stop to pull out a camera and capture it. I didn't see anyone else even seem to notice it, in fact. Everyone was busy going about their business, with their heads down and their attention elsewhere. So maybe if I'm to get credit for anything, it's for not being so absorbed by life that I can't take the time to notice my surroundings.

One thing I've noticed at the library is that kids are much more observant than their parents, and much more likely to be delighted and wonderstruck. I like to make the spaces interesting, with decorations, posters, and other things to discover all over. Adults rarely notice these kinds of things, and when they do they only see the ones at eye level. It's always the kids who point out the things hanging from the ceiling or low to the ground. I was also struck by a section in the book Moonwalking with Einstein on time and memory. Time drags when you're young and flies when you're old, in general. The theory in the book is that time is slower when you're younger because you're busy constantly discovering new things and making new memories. When you get older you've seen and done it all already, so the world is less notable and you pay less attention, thus making fewer memories because you're on autopilot and it all becomes one big blur of quickly passing time.

The picture above isn't the only one of mine that people have praised. Many seem to. I don't consider myself a photographic artist, I just like trying to capture things I enjoy looking at. But the fact that I do so seems to stand out. And it's one of the ways I make myself happy. Instead of keeping my head down and rushing through life, I do my best to pay attention to my surroundings and find things to marvel at, because that makes life more wondrous.