Inspiration :: Iowa Photographer

I’ve been hit with quite a few powerful messages lately. Two that I’d like to share. The first is a poem:

“I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.

For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.”

I just ran across this poem and can’t find the author. It is incredibly eye opening. If you desire something out of life, it is there for the taking. Absolutely do not settle for ‘just getting by’.

The second is a quote from a documentary about Richard Avedon. He had a complex relationship with his father. But during the last years of his father’s life Avedon did a series of portraits of him. There are many interpretations that you hear in the documentary on what the portraits symbolize. There is one person in particular that has a wonderful response to these haunting portraits of an elderly man ravaged by cancer. First, here are a few photographs from that series:

“We’re all skulls. I look at that photograph and I see his skull. And then I wonder, what if we went around and we related to each other as if we’re all skulls?  That we’re all going to die and whenever we die it is going to be too soon. Everything else is irrelevant: race, religion, gender and all the squabbles we get into is all irrelevant to the fact that in the end we’re all the same. And so that’s what I’ve lived with and learned from those photographs.”

It’s quite a ‘heavy’ message in comparison with the poem. But I believe they complement each other well. We will all pass away some day, and that day will be too soon. Don’t worry or stress over matters that you can’t control. Lead with your desires  and obtain as much from life as you wish for.

Hope everyone has had a wonderful start to the new year.

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