And stories help us understand our lives.
Photography is storytelling.
Ten days ago, the class of nine had just settled into seats when our teacher Jay described the theme of the three-day photography workshop*.
Most students were like me, with thousands of photos on their phones — 7,293 for me — and little fundamental understanding of what we were up to when clicking.
Jay’s three-word introduction resonated with me. I taught Politics to college students for 40 years. In the first meeting of all my classes, I would tell them that successful politicians create compelling stories about what matters most to their constituents.
Our class’s first activity was a visual critique. Jay put up a photo and asked us to list the first thing that came to mind in our notebooks. After nine different opinions, he offered the second insight:
Every photo-story idea is correct.
Similarly, I suggested to my students that the objective truth of a politician’s story was often irrelevant to its success as a political strategy.
So armed with a few insights from Jay, including holding my camera close to my body, I’ve wandered my community this past week searching for visualimages that yearn for a voice.
That helps me understand my life.
The Fullness of Time
The first photo was taken last Thursday at the opening ceremony of Nordic Fest. Norwegians founded my Decorah, Iowa, community in the mid-19th century. You can read the official story of the three-day festival honoring this heritage here.
But my story is about time slipping away. Nordic Fest happens the last whole weekend in July. For a former teacher, the beginning of August meant the end of summer. It still does.
Summer just blinked itself away.
I feel the same about my life in this little corner of Iowa.
I took this photo yesterday at daybreak. It reminded me of my first early morning walk 38 years ago in my new community.
My first day in Decorah had been hot and humid, so the following morning offered fog that lifted from the dewed ground.
On that first morning, I could not see all that would become: marriage, a child, an academic career, travel, friends, students, a divorce, a blossomed mature relationship, and retirement. And so much more. The fog was the story.
Yesterday, the sun slowly burned away the low-lying cloud. By evening, I could see the movement of my life beyond its details. Clouds on the ground hide — clouds in the sky illuminate.
This is what is meant by the fullness of time.
The Everyday Mode
However, before that enlightenment, life intervened. First, our downstairs toilet, which had been sputtering, died.
Thirty minutes on YouTube convinced me the problem was the fill valveunder the red cap. Ace Hardware, two blocks away, had a cheap replacement valve. But the ten steps the DIY Replacing All Internal Toilet Parts channel laid out suggested it would take about an hour.
So instead, I walked another block to our go-to plumber. Amazingly, Mike was between big jobs and met me back at the house. Ten minutes later, he had replaced the blue flapper piece after announcing fill valve was healthy.
Thankfully, the toilet was repaired before Jonathan and Irene arrived. That’s seven years old Irene below, standing before her namesake at our local Co-Op.
Jonathan is Rebecca’s son, and Irene is one of her seven grandchildren. They, daughter-in-law Suzanne and newborn Alice were visiting from Houston, Texas.
Yesterday was full of what psychotherapist Irving Yalom** calls the everyday mode, how things are in the world. Toilets need to be fixed, and grandchildren must be entertained. Most of our days are filled with daily details. Often they are problems that must be solved.
Much of our time is gobbled up, doing the things that move us from A To B throughout the day.
But there’s another perspective, what Yalom labels ontological. This is not about the how of life but the miracle that life is: my life and yours.
Mortality
A leaking toilet is one thing; the finiteness of life another. Whenever something comes to an end, like this summer, I briefly move from everyday mode to ontological. That’s why I took the Nordic Fest photo.
I ask myself, how many summers do I have left?
Fortunately, we live next to a cemetery.
Whenever the everyday mode gets too much, I wander around this place. Thinking about death forces me to follow my how many summers question with this one.
How do I want to live with the time I have left?
