Take a Picture, or Engage?

I was working on my Honda out in front of the garage this morning when I heard a loud buzzing noise behind me. It sounded like a giant bumblebee, making a vibrating buzz sound. When I turned, it surprised me to see that it was a hummingbird, trying to fly out through the window pane. My first reaction was to attempt a rescue, to make sure he found his way out of the garage. I opened the second door.

He then became fascinated by the lights, flew up to them and took interest in the bulbs and then the bright colored wiring. For half a second he perched on the red wire there after examining it, then resumed his exploration.

I ran houseward to fetch my Sony Cybershot, but when I returned he was gone.

The thought I had next was that I wish I’d stayed to watch him a little more… just because he was so near, so interesting. I wished that I had remained engaged, involved with this surprisingly wondrous visitor.

So often we reach for a camera to “capture the moment” but what is really happening? The irony is that we may capture an image, but we missed the real moment, the opportunity for engagement.

I am not opposed to picture making, video taking, or other forms of documenting special moments in time. What I do believe is that we need to take care to keep it balanced. Here are three areas where I believe engagement it vital.

Engaging Our World
Buzz Aldrin, in his autobiographical recounting of his moonwalk with Neil Armstrong in 1969, reflected that the mission was not really about humans experiencing the moon as fully human beings. Rather, NASA used them to accomplish objectives, assigning them the task of completing nearly eight hours of experiments in a four hour period. Aldrin wrote that for about fifteen seconds he was able to stop and allow himself the luxury of an emotional engagement with this incredible experience. He was standing on the moon. It had been a lifelong dream, and the dream was actually being fulfilled.
Unfortunately, he had no time for fully living and experiencing that moment. It was back to work, documenting, taking pictures, gathering moon rocks.

So it is that we ourselves can forget to engage the wonder that is all around us. The way the sun slants through the trees and glistens on morning dew, the shimmer of stars on a crisp moonless night… It’s an awesome world. As we travel through, let’s spend the whole of our time simply setting up the next shot.

Engaging Others
Listening is more than simply hearing words. Engaging others is more than simply being in their presence. We’ve all seen scenes in movies where the man is reading the paper, the woman is looking through her magazine. Engagement is possible when you put the newspaper down and the mag away. In our house, it was a dinnertime rule: no books at the table. This was a family time, a time to be present, not checked out.

One of the reasons many of us fail to ache for the poor and needy of Third World countries is that we do not encounter or engage such persons very easily. It is easy to stereotype the poor, or Republicans and Democrats, or business people, but wrong. Every person is a unique individual. Each has their own dreams, sorrows, hopes, disappointments. Every one is significant and important. In point of fact, it is impossible to fully understand the meaning of our own lives without connections to others through engagement.

Engaging Our Selves
Who am I, really? A lot of people don’t know because they afraid to peer that deeply within. Loneliness, anxiety, feelings of meaninglessness… what will I find there? What if I don’t like what I see?

Yet, true life satisfaction can only happen when we make contact with our true selves. Many there are who have idealized images of themselves, or distorted ideas of who they feel they ought to be. The net result is self-frustration, disappointment, tyranny by a host of shoulds, self-reproach and a divided self.

Let it go. Begin the quest to know and understand who you are. It will help you in every way, including relationships, career and life purpose.

At the end of your days, the pictures and journal notes you made will trigger memories long forgotten, and will indeed be precious. But the experiences are what have real value. The pictures are but a tool to re-illuminate them.

Thanks for letting my words engage you briefly. I hope you have enjoyed my pictures, too.