Ok, I’m speaking about big things here. About happiness and the meaning of life.
How can a person having cancer, be happy? You would think, that this sickness is an overall disaster, destroying life from it’s core.. But yet. Even in these circumstances a person can feel happy. And it is such a discovery for me. There is a girl on Facebook, who I started following just because I was so shocked that such a person may have such an illness. I thought, that cancer is for older people. Like when I get older, it may happen to me, too. But the truth is, that cancer and any other illness can happen at any age. And it is really hard to accept.
Looking at this girl, who is a wife, a mother to a toddler just as I am, who is creative, willing to live and struggling with her illness like a hero. And I’m looking at myself. I’m actually fine. I only happen to have dreams that don’t rush to come true, I put a lot of energy into my dreams, either trying to make them into reality, or just being very very sad, that I have so many of them and the reality is not as dreamy at times. And I really don’t feel happy as much as I could. I rather feel resentment and sadness. Like.. I want everything to be so good, so wonderfully perfect, when everything is.. just normal.
I have read a few books about happiness (The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, Happy For No Reason by Marci Shimoff, Eat, Pray, Love. by Elizabeth Gilbert). It is so strange to read about happiness, as it is so much easier just to start feeling it more often.
I believe, that happiness is in moments. It is not in buying a new car, having 5 kids and a house. It is not about having a perfect husband (nobody’s perfect, me included). It is about understanding, what makes you happy each and every day. When Anastasia was born, it was so overwhelming, that a simple cup of tea with a chocolate bar and 5 minutes of stillness and quite were the happiest moments of my life, and it was everything I needed at that time.
Learning to enjoy every minute of your life is the way to happiness. If you have a lot of happy moments, they all add up into a happy life. At that particular happy moment you may not care, that you are ill, or that you are not good enough, or that something isn’t working out. At that particular happy moment you are totally captured by it, you feel it, you see it, you breath it in, you are a happy moment. You are your kid laughing like crazy, while you tickle him. You are this moment of light breeze, touching your hair and this smell of autumn leaves on the ground. It is not around you. When you let yourself feel, you know that these moments are you. And that at this moment nothing else exists.
And we ourselves have the power to create these moments and bring them to our life. We have the power to start stopping and looking at the clouds, breathing in the morning air, enjoying time with our kids and when we’re alone. Enjoying cooking as at the end something good may come out. I rarely enjoy cooking actually. A lot of times it is just for us to have something to eat. But you know what? I’m going to change it. This summer I let myself look at the clouds, and it was a small revolution. As before that I had even forgot, that the clouds exist.
There are so many things around us, that can make us really happy. We just have to see.
And as to photography and the meaning of life…
I do believe, that my photos should show, how precious and unique every person’s life is. And how beautiful it is.
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