Every Person Is A Gift

This could also be phrased, every life is a gift, though a person becomes who they are by living their life. It's hard to imagine a world with seven billion people, seven billion lives and so many more that have lived on this giant blue planet. It is impossible to meet every person who is alive during one's lifetime, but it is possible to meet people who will change us, even if we meet them once and never see them or hear their voice speak to us again. When we see how people touch us, we can see how they gave us a new perspective, bring us together, allow us to smile, take time to be there, teach us something or show us part of life we had never seen, we can see what that person means not only to us, but to life itself.

Behind everything we enjoy is a person who helped form a song, a meal, a memory, a hope, or our very existence. There was a person who you didn't know that well who smiled at you. There was a friend who challenged you to do something you didn't know you could do until you did it, and then you realized how much it changed your life. All it takes is one person to realize how life changing another life is. We each have a wealth of experience from different places, different people, and different perspectives. Currently we have over seven billion of these to teach us, laugh with us, move us, and be a part of our lives.

While there are people who have hurt us, betrayed our trust, and threatened our sense of who we are that may not seem like a gift, they have things to teach us about adversity, reconciliation, and strength to overcome and rise above. For the challenges in life have been said to be there for a reason, they ultimately take us to who we will become, and who we need to be for tomorrow.

It is said that life is short, but it can be extended if we live moment by moment aware and mindful of just how exceptional life is. There are plenty of hardships that can make us appreciative of what we have, and show us how we need each other. Even the strangers in our life can offer pieces of existence forming the garden of life. It's hard to imagine, but many times in our lives, we are strangers to many people, and by giving others the benefit of the doubt in conversations we may have only one with them, we may receive something similar in return. Call it karma, what goes around comes around, or kindness, the person you meet briefly tomorrow can be a gift if you let them show you what life is going to be at that time.

  Standing in the water at Jones Beach State Park. 

Sitting in a park along the Genesee River.

The people in the photos above are people I never met, and may never see again. They may or may not have been a gift to me, but I'm sure they are to other people.

Eternal Skies

It's hard to watch the sky. It draws you into its breadth and brings you to a sense that everything is changing and moving so fast. How can we ever expect life to slow down? It is the sky that brings you into being with everything that is a part of our present reality because it draws us towards everything to the east, the west, the south, and the north. It is space and it is real.

At the same time, watching the sky as it changes becomes a chance to experience the patterns of the home we have here on our earth. While it's hue isn't always blue, it is a way to slow down and take it in. To me, I can sit there on a mountaintop or porch by a lake and see the distance covered by the sky. I can never reach the top by walking. As lightning cuts it open and lets the rain pour to the depths and the blueness seems to go up forever, the sky remains our canopy and that of all of life.

As the clouds change shape and form the paths to elsewhere, they are still for but a minute. As we can look up and become part of the earth we find the sky helps us live again.

Multiple layers of sky moving quickly as the sun sets.

The Creativity of Humanity

"Somewhere in a burst of glory, sound becomes a song" That's Where I Belong - song by Paul Simon

This lyric always strikes me when I listen closely to this song by Paul Simon. It creates the realization many of us notice when we see how things come together to create art. It is the joining of inspiration and media or the music notes that form a melody and shape a harmony that leads to something unique.

Creativity shows us how other people view the world we see and how they want to shape the future of it. It isn't a moment that stops us, but it influences us. I continue to be amazed by how people form works of art from the depths of themselves that reach my own depths and resonate with my own experiences. And sometimes it doesn't even have to be from art, but from the creation of a moment that is intended to be unintentional or a design that is merely functional. 

Pieces of life come together in color and expressive touches from line to shape and many more features. In walking down streets and taking in the work of people around me, I often wonder about the origins or stand looking, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching something curiously striking. The arrangement of flowers in a garden, the mosaics of tile spelling out letters of a destination on a wall, the drone of bagpipes, the spicy radish in a summer salad, and the feel of marble in a national memorial often created from what we see, what we know, and what makes us most alive. It is what stops us in our tracks and makes us notice that something beautiful has been shared with us or that something beautiful has come from our lives and ways of seeing.

If someone says they aren't creative, I doubt their statement. I believe everyone has their own way of expressing their creativity that is emotive or personal that is unlike someone else's. They may wish that they were creative like someone else, but that only minimizes their efforts to create what means something to their lives. I am often inspired by colors, lights, water, textures, flavors, and arrangements of objects in displays. If the glory of life is found when sound becomes a song, it can also be noticed when the inspiration becomes tangible and emotive as we share life and notice our connection to ourselves, to others, and to the moment that can be shared as a piece of one's life that is left to experience. 

Creativity throughout New York State in the subjects of the photographs, not the photographs themselves.

Reflection of neon light -  Rochester, New York

Stone wall in Central Park - New York, New York

Twin spires of a church in Buffalo, New York

Memorial in Clinton Square  - Syracuse, New York

Colorful mural in New York, New York  

Supports of  a railroad bridge - Schenectady, New York