In life, I have taken the opposite approach. Try to interact with many people and things as good an impact as possible on them. In this quest, I have realized that changing one person's impression of the world for the better is changing the entire world. The world might seem daunting if you try to change the whole thing at once. If with each of these contacts, I change some person or animal's outlook on the world for the better, I will be changing the world for the better. On that note, here is a shot of a butterfly that I photographed the other day at the bug fair at the LA museum of Natural History.So that's the mission, now off to make adventures and an impact.
Here's an interesting question: where do we divide our lives between that which we wish to impact and that which we simply observe? I agree that most people, causes, and fields of knowledge are worth trying to impact in some positive way. But what about natural landscapes, religions, friends' romances, or foreign cultures? Sometimes we have to step back and learn to love beauty without marking it as our own.
ReplyDeleteI would say that the point that you've brought up brings up something I left out of my post, the impact on the adventurer himself or herself. Sometimes, the best way to make an impact (i.e. in nature as in the national parks) is to merely take in the beauty. However, part of living is learning how to be an active observer. This means that rather than making an impact on the landscape, it is making an impact on you, whether it be in leaving its memory or by giving the observer an idea. If the opportunity presents itself to change something for the better, the active observer can immediately switch into "do something" mode and do what is necessary. Its almost always better to live life in active mode, whether observing or not.
ReplyDeleteWell said. In a way, "active mode" is the only life I'd really call living; anything else is just the passage of time. You have to climb out of your state of well-defined energy in order have a non-trivial time dependent part to your wavefunction.
ReplyDeleteSchrodinger would be proud.
ReplyDelete