A Camera’s View Will Change Your Life
Zoom Out to Find Your Solution
Life hands you mysteries. And I love seeing the fine intricacies and telescopic views of it. The wide angle perspectives and macro details. Sometimes things look a little distorted as if looking through a camera with a fish eye lens or a tilt-shift lens. And it’s amazing when everything finally comes together. When you zoom out to see how the puzzle pieces of life begin to fit together.
That’s what happened to me. And I’m amazed. It’s perplexing to try and understand life’s circumstances. It’s fascinating to see how things unfold. To wonder why something is happening one moment — and to find out a few days or months or even years later — only for another puzzle piece to go missing.
When you are constantly living in flow, life unfolds perfectly. When you’re ebbing with the tides, it’s as if you are building a sand castle at the edge of where the water breaks. If you keep at it and keep at it, you may eventually get a sand castle built. Maybe when the tide goes down or maybe when you decide to build a higher foundation/base for the sand castle. However, if you take a step back or zoom out and see that the tide will continually break near where you are trying to build that castle, you may decide to look for a different solution. Rather than keep at it, you may realize that it would be better to build one further away from shore.
As a photographer, if you see an image in your head that you want to capture and the lens you are using currently isn’t working, you don’t fret. You don’t pout or get upset. You switch out the lens. If the lighting isn’t working, you adjust your setup — you may bring in other lights, or diffusion panels, or reflectors — to manipulate the direction of light to make it work. Or in the case of natural light, we wait for the right time. We wait for the sunlight to be in just the right position. We learn to problem solve. We learn to adjust and make adjustments, as needed. We learn to be patient. So why don’t we do this for life? When something goes wrong, if something doesn’t feel right — instead of stressing or worrying or getting upset — why don’t we just shift our perspective, just as we would switch out a lens?
Life is about solutions. It’s not about problems and re-living those problems. It’s about tweaking perspective and trying to figure out a solution for whatever circumstance you are in. That’s what my mom always tried to teach me. “This happened, so what? What next, what now? Let’s look for a solution. If something isn’t working, what could you do/change to make it work?” It’s about not staying stuck or dwelling on what went wrong. It’s about changing your lens to capture a better picture — changing your perspective to gain a better life.
That’s what I love about puzzles and rock climbing. It’s not about how you get there — it’s about problem solving — because everyone will come up with their own formula or the best route for them. It’s about coming up with a solution or formula for yourself that works to get you to accomplish your goal. And your goal may not even be to finish. It may just be to achieve more than you did the day before.
