The worth of a moment!

I walk every morning and have done so for some weeks and months excepting the last week, which saw me curtail this wonderful activity because I became rather ill. I walk to lose a little weight, or to postpone, if I can, the chance of becoming a diabetic with its incumbent possible twists and turns in health. Ultimately though, I walk and jog not to live longer, but to live better.

I prefer to walk in the last 30-40mins of darkness before the sun rises. I like to walk at this time because of the solitude and the harmony I feel with nature. I walk and jog along and get to this space near a body of water where I sit and bask in the rising sun over the river, I watch and marvel at the bird life and absorb the sound-enriched air that seems to be saturated with an emerging call from the bird life that is different and yet in perfect harmony with all the other sounds. By this time, other walkers, cyclists and joggers come onto the scene, and the sun is out and the day begins. The occasional car passes by and I walk briskly back to my abode and commence the activity of the day.

At the start of this walk, I pass through a small tunnel and it literally is so dark, I cannot see the ground or the other end, which is probably about 40 feet long. It is in this space that I reach a place a friend calls "auditory exclusion" an occurrence that happens when you focus so totally on one thing that even if you stand next to someone firing a loaded gun, you cannot hear the sound of the gunshot. This friend is a federal police officer. It is in this moment of darkness that I step gingerly forward, one step after another, and become so acutely aware of my heart beating, my breathing, and the silence. Strange though it may seem, I love this space. I love getting to the other end and seeing a little more light, and then enjoy the light emerge through the darkness in the sunrise.

It reminds me of a time when I was lying in a bed in the island of Leyte in the Philippines in 1986. I was awoken to a storm, the likes I had never seen before or since. I was in the middle of a typhoon. Typhoon Undung to be precise. It killed some 546 people in the Visayan Islands in the aftermath tally. It was so dark during the storm that I would move my hand in front of my face and then away several times and it was so totally black that I could see absolutely nothing. It was an experience that never really leaves you.

The only time I could see was when the lightning struck the ground and I could see the cheap Nipa Hut (reed and straw) houses around me in one flash were gone in the next. Really. It was horrific. The darkness is not a place I specifically like, but it is a brief time and space when I get to so truly appreciate the light. I appreciate the struggle in my life and I appreciate the slow blessings that seem to come after periods of doubt and darkness. I raise this because life is a series of opposites, and when I slowly come to appreciate one circumstance I may be in, like the way I am thinking when I pick up a camera and ask myself, what it would it look like from this angle. I ask myself also, what is the opposite of this moment. It teaches me some mental acceptance both from where I am, and allows me to patiently realise that this too will pass, and give rise to where I will be. Sometimes in a moment, at other times a seeming lifetime.

I love life. I love having friends, and I am constantly surprised by how many I seem to really have. I remember at the age of 14 when my adopted father died, I attended the funeral and without exaggeration there were some 500 people there in attendance. It has been an experience that never left me. He is a man that never had much of the things that life has to offer, and he certainly had his fair share of faults, as do I, but the one thing he had was a love for people. I think though he was my adopted father, I adopted some of the good things that made him truly great. This simple comparison, I raise because I have become more aware that we are not islands at all, we are indeed people who need each other and people who yearn for an understanding and connection to our fellow men and women. I ask myself often, does my life really make a difference?
You can make your own assessment, but it makes a difference to me. I think also that many of the images I have taken, have added a small part of me into generational family gifts that tell stories of their respective lives and memory laden threads of lore. What is our worth? I submit that we are of an inestimable worth and valuable to people whom we may never really know.