Yesterday’s meander was along a winding little trail in Plant City accompanied by two of my most special friends. And when I use the word “special” I mean it not only in the sense of how I feel about them, but also how their knowledge and characters enrich my own experience.
Jax is a science teacher and Simona is a plantologist and with each fern or fallen log, my knowledge base was increased as I soaked up their insights into what everything was.
I have written before on the advantages of having a good friend with you on a trail and yesterday’s experience was all that and more. I like to think that I am reasonably well informed on the natural world, but I was very much a novice in the presence of such beautifully encased souls.
My shots were many and varied of all that was green, or wet, or growing on the surface of trees and fallen logs. Any many of these were really good shots. But the shots that I have included here are of a different topic.
We came across some wild grasses that were seeding in a burst of reds and crimsons. My approach to them was from a position lower down on the trail and looking up, and I noticed how the sun behind them created flashes of color that washed over my eyes.
So, normally I try very hard to get as tight a focus as I can and for my first shot here, that is what I did:
But then I decided to capture the colors as the movement of the little seeds in the breeze painted their own gallery for my eyes. Here’s what I got (at the bottom of this post). Hope you enjoy!
Anyway, the whole process got me thinking about how we view certain things. How we separate them in our minds. But as in most cases, life doesn’t fall into neatly organized black and white boxes. In this case, nature and art overlap into something that as merely the shutter-clicker, I only capture. The creator is mother nature and this wonderful world we live in.
So why do we do that? Why do we always try to put things in discrete boxes, rather than just allow them to blow in the breeze?
I think it has something to do with the human brain being a rational instrument (well, for us non-republicans in any event) and we are in an agitated or uncomfortable state until we have an answer to everything.
It’s why humans created flat-earths and gods. Without such things, we would have to accept that there are some things we just don’t know.
And what is the harm in not-knowing? Why do we fear that so much that we will even go to war and commit genocide in order to argue our answers to the unknown.
But when we take this to a personal level and relate to those around us by trying to neatly put everyone in a known box, we sell them and ourselves short. We create stereotypes of people of color, of different religion, even of different sexual persuasions. Then we decide who we do and don’t like and we label the boxes accordingly.
But at the end of the day, everyone is human. Just like us. They live and breathe. They have fears and needs and wants, just like us. They may speak with foreign accents or even foreign languages, but they are the same as us.
Until we recognize that, we will continue to build walls and create boxes for all these “illegals”. I watched a wonderful sketch the other night on SNL where the native americans were concerned about these illegals coming over on boats and how they needed to build a wall.
So, as I said, the problem with continually needing to have an answer and to be able to put a tag on everyone we meet is that we only end up putting ourselves in a box … with the big label that says bigot, hater, misogynist, trumper, ignorant, or all the above.
By all means we should seek answers and enjoy the shared knowledge of the world we live in. But as life’s journey is far more important than the destination, so too is the answer seeking and not the answer itself.
Have a wonderful week everyone!
