Quotes of the Week from Me:

“Do something for yourself every day.”

“What can you do today that’s noteworthy?”

“The biggest mystery is defining who we are. We must experience, express, and fulfill our identities through purposeful exploration. Asking yourself ‘Who am I?’ is step one. Don’t avoid the question.”

“Each day we are given a chance and a choice. They are invaluable. Choose wisely to make the most of every chance you are given.”

Quotes of the Week from Someone Else:

“We have a deficit of wonder right now.” – Tom Waits

“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

-Confucius

“I killed a plant once because I gave it too much water. Lord, I worry that love is violence.”

-José Olivarez

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories, Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something…” -Kurt Vonnegut

Quick Optimism

You will experience hardship, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction. But you will be okay.

Dukkha:

A profound concept in Buddhism that refers to the inherent suffering or dissatisfaction in life. It highlights the understanding that challenges and sadness are an integral part of the human experience and can be the path to liberation.

Omnipresent optimism is possible. Omnipresent positivity is not. (Another quote from me, I guess)

Full Newsletter

I needed a break from words this week. Not from writing them, from reading them. Ok, not all of them. I still did some reading, but I kept it light. I kept saying “Keep things light,” this week. Part of this was because I am back at work from paternity leave – a lot of my other reading was emails.

It feels like I have been on “research overload,” and in an epiphany-like manor, I remembered just how much I appreciate quality photography, and the stories it tells.

The brightest sights of colors; I can hear the visuals. Access to people and places; the spectrum of human-made wonders continuously challenges what we think we know is “humanly” possible. Like books, photos grant us access to places other people have gone. We won’t be able to touch the experiences depicted, but now we know they exist. Now we have initiated an observational relationship with wonder, beauty, and life.

There is a simple lesson in the ever-present existence of beauty. And oftentimes, it is chaos. Beautiful chaos. Too many people don’t see it. Maybe they ignore it. But it is always there.

It seeks no order, a mingling of colors chatting with one another while engaging our senses. Beautiful chaos dulls our pain; its indiscreet vigor is good for the soul. It is intense.

A glimpse of the unexpected, the typically inaccessible, some photographs surprise us. Others leave us speechless. They make us look and then turn around after leaving to look again.  

In a paraphrased version of the old saying, photographs say a lot more than our words. What we write, what we say, does not contain a capacity capable of interpreting photographic art.

Our imperfect world is there to be seen. With an open heart, fall in love with the surprise of beautiful chaos.  

My favorite photos from this week:

Robert Clark, based in New York City, is a photographer for National Geographic Magazine. Photo below from Siem Reap, Cambodia.

“Architecture can’t fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn’t real.” – Frank Stella

From Alex Hyde, a wildlife photographer based in the UK.

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”

 – Thich Nhat Hanh

Photographer Jeremy Woodhouse.

“If the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall then I think we’d see the beauty then we’d stand staring in awe.” – Conor Oberst