Escaping from a stress-filled day, I headed off to Lake Mirror yesterday evening. I wanted to just breathe in a little and take sunset as a sedative.
In truth, there wasn’t likely to be much of a sunset, but I figured it might be a good chance to explore some camera options that I haven’t mastered quite yet.
The clouds looked angry when I first arrived but then after the sun went down, and I entered the blue hour, the setting became much more peaceful, even when some distant lightning put on its early show. Hope you like these shots!
Once again I struggled against my own shortcomings but these were outweighed by breathing in the cool summer breeze that made its way in off the lake. It was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours.
As I drove away and my mind began to reflect, I thought about how even though I never moved my camera set up once, the scene in front of me managed to bring its own variations to my lens.
It made me think that sometimes, it isn’t so much about what changes we do but rather how we open our mind to changes that occur about us. Change is generally a good thing in life. Being open to change is a key ingredient to growing as a person.
It is one of the reasons I shake my head at conservatives (who are driven to keep things as they are) and regressives (who are trying to return to “when things were great”).
Life is not static, nor does it regress. It moves forward and to get the most out of life, it behooves us to move forward with it. Evolution moves our species forward anyway regardless. It pulls us down from the trees, gets us to walk upright, and create tools and technology to generally improve our fellow man.
But as people, we live only within the scope of one generation and so any progress we benefit from, can only come from our own willingness to open our hearts and minds to change and live the life that happens in front of us.
Conservatism is destined to fail in the long run so these petty political actions/reactions are irrelevant. Empires, colonialism, fascism, communism, conservatism … history is witness to their failure.
In the words of John F Kennedy; “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
Last night’s change happened in the space of an hour or two. Life’s changes mostly take a tad longer. But whenever and however, we should embrace it so that in turn it embraces us.
Neville,
As usual nicely done. Yes the clouds look angry but as the evening progressed they were muted.
As you say, sometimes there are things that come our way that soften those angry ideas or perceptions that we have, if we wait long enough.
Patience and seeing the wonderful things that life gives us is a blessing and like a lot of blessings sometimes difficult to see.
OOPS I have entered the “twilight zone” so I will sign off with a nicely done.
Thank you John … sometimes, I think I am living in the twilight zone!