It was likely the first time I ever went to shoot something with just a single image in my mind.
Yes, it was the chance to enjoy another gorgeous twilight at Lake Parker, but in my mind, I was more interested in getting one shot that involved the “mirror window” that I found locked away in one of my storage spots that other day.
It is a cool mirror that is framed and cross-pieced to look like a window and I wondered if I could get it to give me a reflection of the horizon while mother nature infused her unique blend of colors into the day.
I got there in plenty of time and was happily experimenting for about twenty minutes before anyone else arrived. In fact, when I was in the middle of moving my setup, I was so engrossed that I didn’t noticed a man appear from the trees and walk onto the pier where I was standing.
When he said “good morning” from a distance of about six feet away, I nearly shit myself and screamed “jeezez christ” like a young schoolgirl. He was even wearing a flashlight on his head. You would have thought I would have noticed him from a distance quite easily.
He was a nice man and we had a good chat and I apologized for my over-the-top scream on his appearance.
I stopped experimenting with the mirror after that. He was getting busy on the pier and others were beginning to arrive with their boats for a day’s fishing.
So, I took some other normal shots and the twilight was in fact quite gorgeous and very obliging.
I added a few of the shots along with one mirror shot at the end of the blog. I hope you enjoy!
I was still smarting from my girlish scream as I got into the car and headed home and the thought for today’s blog began to form then in my head, It was about how engrossed I had become in something to the extent that I had shut out my surroundings.
While there is nothing sinister about what happened in this instance, keeping track of what is going on around you can be the difference between life and death in some of the trails I go on. And that is true for many natural trail-shooting experiences.
I shocked myself at being so involved in what I was doing to the detriment of all else and arrived at the conclusion that it was the fact that I was being single-mindedly focused on what I was doing with the mirror.
It brings to mind the thought how sometimes we become so narrowly focus on a single involvement, that we become oblivious to things around us at the same time.
Oftentimes, we prioritize that single focus highly and the things that are happening around us less so. And there are many moments when this is the correct thing to do. When something is of tantamount importance to us, we are right to exclude other things that might distract us from the purpose at hand.
But most of our lives should be lived without a singular driving purpose and we need to become aware of things that are taking place around us that are suffering because of a single minded purpose.
Going through large portions of our life in a single minded way can cause us to lose many important portions of life that we don’t willingly lose. The obvious example is the person who devotes their attention exclusively to work issues to the detriment of family.
But there are also many prices exacted on a more moment-to-moment basis when we travel through even just a single day with only one thing on our mind. For example, the arrival of an opportunity in our lives is rarely heralded and given advance notice. We don’t get an alarm going off to let us know that an opportunity is about to happen.
Yet, if we are focused on a single purpose to the exclusion of all others, we don’t even get the chance to prioritize what we are doing against such an opportunity because we don’t even know the opportunity exists.
A good rule of thumb is to travel through life with as much of a multi-tasking, multi-purpose view as you possibly can. And even in near-extreme situations, only assign 80% to 90% of ourselves to a sudden emergency that requires a single purpose approach.
In so doing, we allow ourselves to entertain something important that crosses our horizon at the same time.
What I am saying is never hang a “do not disturb” sign on your door. Only one that reads “go ahead and disturb but do understand that I may ignore you”.
… just a thought!
