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| My mom (long hair) and her friend Conni (short hair) laying on a towel in the grass when they were twelve years old |
When I was a little girl I used to look deep and long at photos of my mom when she was a little girl. I would focus, unfocus, refocus my eyes, will myself to fall into it; into my mom before she was a woman.
The woman I looked up at with all the love in the world had been a little girl; was still a little girl in those photos. A little girl, like me.
But not me.
How? How was my mom once a girl? What did that mean?
I wanted wanted wanted to know her thoughts, her experiences, her dreams. I tried to imagine them, but it was tainted, wrong, it was me imagining. I wanted to KNOW. I'd ask her, and lucky for me my mom was the sort of woman who would answer these probing questions from her daughter. And I was confident she was answering honestly. But they were the answers of a woman, shared with a girl who was not her, and I knew that fell far short from knowing.
I'd try again. Bringing mom's imperfect answers with me I'd fall into the eyes of the girl in the photo, try to disappear most of the girl that was me - hold onto only enough of me to remember what it was I was seeking from the image of my mom as she was, which was a moment of my mom as she became...
This is what it can be to look at and imagine. To take our time, think, wonder. Linger. Linger longer. I was not the only one doing it, I'm sure.
Lately, though, I notice so many people looking merely for seemingly superficial purposes. Quick successive jolts of image inducing reactions, it seems like? Perhaps for the jolt of chemicals our brains release when seeing something beautiful, shocking, sexy, rage inducing.
I see people look quickly, move on; seek more.
There is less moving within, moving along, allowing more, thinking and wondering and exploring the images; going where they take us, thinking about things along the way. People still linger, but it seems they stay only until the initial jolt of emotion has waned and then they move on for more of that, more closely related to the jolt. Reading and leaving comments is too often a way to stay jolted, it is not often enough a type of deeper exploration.
It is entirely human to engage in emotion through our senses. I think this is what I was doing as a little girl desiring to know my mom as she was; to feel myself be known by her as well. Yes, I think I was doing that too. Wanting the little girl that was my mom to know the little girl that was me.
But I worry that without the longer linger, without the deeper explorations and thoughts, the adjusting of ourselves along the way, the noticing of our thoughts and the recognition of our limitations, we are merely addicts. Brain-chemical junkies.
Not all of us have vision, or are able to use sight in this way, but those of us who are able might want to consider lingering longer. Listening to what we are thinking, and exploring why we are thinking it. Teasing out the motivations - our own, the image sharers - and allowing the chemicals to run their course before we seek the next hit.
We are relentlessly exposed to images intended to make us want, hunger, hate.
Images intended to make us smile, laugh, feel peace.
These images on their own can also encourage us to think. But if we do not linger long enough, they simply encourage an addiction to more images giving us a feeling.
A feeling that is our own, yet we are too easily allowing outside images to do the job of jump-starting our emotions. Of corralling them.
I like the idea of lingering longer.
Of exploring what my inside is telling me - not only from the first jolt but on into the day. To allow thinking and exploring to be organically my own, not overly influenced, though admittedly influenced.
I like influence, I like sharing, I like learning from outside of me.
I like seeing my mom as a girl, looking into her eyes and asking what she sees and how she hopes to be seen.
We are what we consume and those of us with sight are obligated to consume images.
When we linger longer we can find time to include the nutrition our capacity to think, care, and understand truly requires. To exercise those muscles; that skill.
Happy New Year friends!
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| Family portrait: my aunt Delmarie, my grandma, my grandpa, my mom (left to right) |
