If you haven’t figured it out already, all these early morning shoots recently are initiated by Rocky. Around three each morning he decides I have had enough sleep and starts jumping heavily on me, running from a distance and landing on my back or chest, and if that doesn’t work, pushing me on the face with his paws and meowing at me.
So, needless to say, it was another early shoot this morning. This time, Lake Mirror in downtown Lakeland was the venue and while the clutter on the opposite shore makes it an imperfect spot for a sunrise, it was close, I had my coffee, so what the hell.
The lights from the far shore can give a lovely source of reflection in the event nothing happens on the horizon and so I played with short and long exposures to try to get something of value.
The low-lying bank of cloud that smothered the horizon provided a neat effect though inasmuch as it gave a split-sky aspect to the eventual twilight, where the cloud bank ended. Shot four below is what I mean and essentially the sky holds its blue where the shadow of the cloud beneath is, while the rest begins its orange-pink glow.
Eventually (as you can see in pic 5) it all becomes too much for the cloud bank to constrain and the colors leak out over the entire sky.
Anyway, it’s only a small set but they are at the end of the blog and I hope you like.
So, as I wrapped up things and was about to set off back to the car, I threw my back pack over my shoulder. I hadn’t zipped the top pouch up though and battery backs and a lens cover fell out onto the pavement below.
I pulled the back-pack quickly back off (before something more serious fell out) and the strap caught on my arm and opened up a cat-scratch on it
Now much worse than the original scratch (it officially fell into the wound category), blood started to dribble down my wrist and onto the ground.
So, I was feeling a tad frustrated at myself by the time I got back to the car and headed home.
Thus, the blog thought evolved from the whole notion of things that wound us to how we deal with all of life’s wounds and bruises.
You see, physically speaking we normally get wounds that are either self-inflicted or third-party caused and we tend to treat them based on the severity of the injury.
Some (like cat scratches) we might even wear with pride. I happily explain my cat scratches at the store as being just playful babies and Morgan is quick to point out the possum bite marks that left loving scars on her arm.
Other third party wounds we might even exhibit with a loud amazement “Wanna see where they ripped out my heart and put in a new one?”
And self-inflicted wounds are normally hidden away from the embarrassment of having self-injured.
But really my thoughts this morning were on the mental or psychological wounds that we all get while navigating the turbulent waters of life.
To most of the world, these are invisible wounds. Only our closest friends might even know they exist.
Some might be so extreme that they become a source of PTSD and then others see our pain out in the open and in the bright exposure of daylight.
But thankfully, that level of emotional injury is relatively rare. Relative, that is, to the normal battering and bruising we get on a daily basis.
As in the physical side, some injury is self-inflicted, but the majority are experienced either from another person or an event. Situations that are largely out of our control.
We might be dumped, ridiculed, demeaned, abused, fired, demoted … there are a range of things that can wound us.
Most wounds aren’t fatal and time in these cases is a great healer. We move on. People recover. Things are put into boxes and a lid put on them.
But some wounds leave scars. And though the cut itself may have healed, we are affected on a deep and permanent level.
No one sees these normally, but when we look in our mental mirror, we see them. We know the baggage that we are carrying and where the damage is.
It is important to know this about ourselves. Not just because it explains our behavior in getting into new relationships, navigating new situations, or reacting to certain behaviors.
But also (and I would argue, more importantly) it allows us to better defend ourselves against whatever caused that level of pain in the first place.
Once bitten, twice shy is only relevant if you know you were bitten.
So, whenever we look in that mirror, we need to find the scar and add a label on it. Who gave it to us, how they did it, and why we were vulnerable to it.
Understanding ourselves is a major component of being able to successfully navigate our lives. At least, without repeatedly getting wounded by the same type of sources that have done it to us before.
The odds of a wound being fatal increases with the number of wounds we get along the way. Band-aids can only cover so much.
… just a thought.
