This was the advice that I was given this week by someone whose word I take as gospel.
“Time to worry, really?,” I asked myself as I contemplated my choice of mentor. It seemed so counterintuitive. I’ve been told my whole life not to worry, because worrying is bad and pointless and never leads to anything good. But yet, here I was being told to schedule time out of my day to worry.
“Okay,” I hesitantly responded to the seemingly mad advice, “I’ll try to worry more.” As I fidgeted in the chair, trying desperately to figure out the solution to my momentary crisis of faith came the lightbulb moment.
“But I hate worrying,” I started to ramble, “Worrying leads to nothing good. It’s ridiculous, almost obnoxious even. As I worry, I get irritated with myself because I see how good I have it, therefore, why should I be worrying in the first place?”
A small, knowing grin emerges from my mentor’s mouth as she chews on the pen cap while she watched me stew over the irony that was materializing in my mind.
“I have it so good,” I continue, “Like there’s so much that I should be being grateful for instead of worrying.”
Bingo. There it was. See, this woman knows me well, almost too well. She knows how my mind works–how it gets from Point A to B. If she let me debate worry for a while, she knew I’d come back to gratitude–I always do. Gratitude is the saving grace of my life.
If comparison is the thief of all joy, then gratitude must be the giver of all joy. It’s science, gratefulness is the deciding factor of what makes joyful people,well…joyful. (Seriously, Harvard did a study on it to drive this point home.)
We as a people have to practice gratitude more. It has to be the narrative consistently rehearsed over and over–during the good, the bad, and the ugly. We have to call out the things that are worth celebrating, no matter how big or small. Those tiny moments of insignificant good add up, and those are the moments that we should be screaming from the rooftops. That version of the story will change your entire life.
So if you’re anything like me–stubborn, think you’re always right, slow learner–worry your way to gratitude. But if you’re smarter than me, just start with gratitude. May we all try a little harder to attain this quaint, light-filled spirit–it’s absolutely worth it.
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I remember when I was in high school and my teacher did an object lesson on the Industrial Revolution. She gave us each plain white sheets of paper and gave us five minutes to draw a person. “Make them as ornate as possible,” she said. The timer started and off we went. Our creations varied in skill, but the true artists in the class generated beautiful works of art. For the time given, I was quite impressed with our illustrations. Then, the teacher changed it up. She told us to arrange ourselves into an assembly line. Each of us would be given five seconds to draw a specific body part and then pass it to our neighbor for them to complete their designated job. We were supposed to crank out as many complete people as possible in five minutes. The timer rang and that second group of drawings we produced were TERRIBLE. We made a lot of them, but the quality was awful.
Fast forward this valuable life lesson about 7 years into the future. Enter me today. I’ve always been speedy fast. Like, I get yelled at the most for running around like a chicken with my head cut off. “Slow down Rachael” is something that always echoes after my footsteps. And due to circumstances in my life, I’ve been forced to learn how to slow down and pause–and it’s taught me a lot.
There is an art to stopping to smell the roses. There is a craft to slowing down and taking your time. Admiring the beauty of things is good–actually it’s necessary. While efficiency gets things done, it doesn’t produce the same quality of work that is needed to stand out in a crowd, especially in creative circles. In the creative field, it isn’t the quantity of work that counts, it’s the quality. I’ve found that when I take my time, my skill level increases. The people that count on me actually have less work to do when I take my time and do it right. I am more effective in the impact that I make when I take my time, and that is what ultimately counts.
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This week I peeked into the world of photography. I’m marveled by those who can stand behind the lens and capture the world’s beauty–it absolutely fascinates me. But as someone who has stood in the Colosseum and gazed upon the Arc de Triomphe, photography has always seemed to be the last thing on my mind. I’m the tourist who gazes upon ancient piles of stone and speculates how these great wonders came to be. I get so lost in my thoughts and in the world of my imagination to remember to take out my phone and snap a picture proving I stood in the magnificent shadows of the greatest marvels mankind has ever seen.
The thing that I learned about photos was how they use the concepts of light and shadow to create the actual image. For photographers, I’m sure the concept isn’t as mind-blowing as it was to me. But to take the energy of light and darkness and make a likeness to the physical blew me away. At the essence of it all, light is the power force of all things. It is the energy that makes the world turn. So to freeze the light and shadow of things to make a still image is amazing.
Humans have the capacity to manipulate the most powerful source in the universe. They can eternally make light stand still to capture the moments of humanity’s triumph and defeat, their joy and their sadness. If we have the power to use light to make a fixed reflection, what more do we have the power to do? The possibilities are endless, and so is the responsibility.
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