Putting Down the Lenses

I recently read several posts about the guilt the writers felt for having missed a day of blogging. Now, here I am, writing after having missed three days. How did that happen?  I had figured it would be easier to write once Spring Break arrived, bringing with it slow, peaceful mornings and unrushed evenings. My experience has been the exact opposite.

With my husband still off from work recovering from knee surgery, we have been running around trying to get a few of our many half-finished projects around the house completed. Once we decided to host Easter this year, we ended up adding even more projects to the list. On top of that, there have been meetings to attend as we prepare for our older son to start high school next year, laundry and packing and forms to sign to get ready for his school band's Disneyland trip, and my younger son's school dance performance to attend. In short, we've been busier than ever, leaving little time to write.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

At my son's dance performance last Tuesday, I ended up with an obstructed view of the stage. This isn't unusual, being that I am what some might consider vertically challenged. My older son, Jared, had a better view, so I handed off the camera to him. For the first time, all I had to do was watch my child dance. Every time before, I had witnessed such an event through a camera lens. When the performances ended, I always felt as if I hadn't really seen them, having been so caught up in getting the perfect shot with which to record the moment.

Writing isn't so very different. Events are viewed through various lenses in order to discern some significance in them. We look back at the images we have recorded and reflect on each of them, trying to determine which image captures the moment best, the image we will hold up to the world in hopes that they will be as captivated as we were. The image that will preserve the moment for all time.

And sometimes, in our desperate search to immortalize the moment, we miss it completely.

Challenging ourselves to blog daily about slices of our lives is a challenge worth taking.  It teaches us to view even the most seemingly inconsequential moments of our lives as the valuable building blocks that they are. And ironically, that sometimes means putting the lenses down and simply living in the moment.