This seems like a simple equation, one where it appears obvious as to the answer and what the next steps look like to do so. With such busy schedules and meeting the demands of so many critical components in an effort to ensure that our lives move forward in a seamless manner, we sometimes forget that this life is but once and that while we are planning for this great finisher, what we seldom remember is that we are living it right now, there are no redos and there are no take backs, only takeaways. I am human and I am certainly not immune to these driving factors myself, balancing family, work, finances and dreams can be a tricky thing to regulate let alone understand. I find myself questioning my purpose on a daily basis, ensuring that I have my eyes focused on the right things, so as to not end up an old man one day filled with regret. Regret is an interesting set of circumstances and emotions to deal with, since much of it must come as a result of experience and time that we will never get back.
I set out on my journey to find peace within myself as a young man. Early on in life I knew that there was something greater than money and control, I knew that seeking out peace in my heart fulfilled with purpose and a passion for this journey made a great deal of sense to me. I hadn’t quite understood what that meant in adult terms of survival all while keeping true to my innermost ethos though. You could say I was an infant in an adult’s body transforming into a new self that was ready to fly yet constricted by the confines of life and societal pressures. I grew up unconventional by most Western standards, so I was already groomed to think differently and believe in an alternative way of life. You see, growing up sailing around the world and visiting other people and cultures opened my eyes to the possibilities. Being home schooled also brought more understanding in that education wasn’t as important as it is made out to be; unless you intuitively know how to leverage and utilize that knowledge gained. In essence, I was beginning to see the flaw in a system that hadn’t changed much over the last hundred years. Many subjects are taught that have little to no relative use in today’s society, case in point much of today’s curriculum is not very useful within most organizations and much of the time a piece of paper showing that you graduated only identifies you as an individual who did the work, yet so few are being paid for their chosen course of study.
How I arrived with my decision was based on much of what I wrote above and obviously many other circumstances as well. However, the most motivating factor is that time was wasting, and I couldn’t get any of it back. Each day from then on out, I decided to do something that would allow me to nurture this feeling within and as each day passes acknowledge that I must do something that allows me to grow closer to the idea that I must honor what life I have left to live. This intense purpose filled dream was the birth of how and why I chose to reconnect with nature. In nature, I feel that everything around me is communicating with me on a vibration which allows for greater purpose, sense of calm and a real way to build peace from within. I am certainly not a monk, I do not occupy a monastery and no, I do not sleep on a bed of clouds, at least yet anyhow. Simply put I am much more purpose driven and knowing that time is finite, yet eternal, this journey here on earth is a short one and I may as well get to work living for each moment and each breath with a definitive purpose in mind.
Enter photography. At a base level I have always held an enduring love for the art form. Photography was introduced to me when I was around seven to eight years of age, a time where I could easily be distracted with fishing, exploring or grabbing the camera and taking photos of things that I found interesting. From those very formative years, I began to understand what it was that I wanted out of photography as an artform and how landscapes in particular captivated me the most. With all of the travel I had done as a boy, it only seemed natural that Landscape photography took a center stage in my life. Always seeking out heart pounding moments where everything hangs on a single moment of execution! Now that grabbed my attention more than anything else, ever before! At heart, I am not sure that I have ever grown up, yet the complexities of life have me working and building within my business much of the time. Balancing business and passion along with a passion for business and fine art were a natural progression in my life. They simply seemed to fit together with much more purpose than anything else before it.
At the root of it all was this deep and profound love of our earth and every moment I am able to spend immersed in all of its beauty, serenity and harshness, the more fulfilled and present I become. There becomes these defining moments of singularity within each place, where each experience has its own crescendo. The world is so diverse and expansive, requiring massive amounts of physical exertion, planning, woodsmanship and intuition, yet at the same time, so small and easily explored as we are but a dot on the horizon of space time.
My desire was driven to reconnect with nature out of a result of being led to believe that there were certain expectations out of me as a part of society. That the path to success was one which was to be carved out by doing things a certain way and for a while, I certainly tried to do my best in doing so. At the end of the day, I felt that I lacked purpose for “me”, there was an agenda without question, but that agenda was not true to our purpose and heart’s desire. The agenda was work hard, pay bills, work hard, take care of family, work hard, forget yourself but somehow after sixty years of working hard when you’re old and gray go ahead and spend the last few years of your old age dying for a legacy you built for someone else. That profound thought was simply something I could not bear to live with, and I drove to change it with every fiber of my being!
The most sensible direction of travel was to follow my heart’s desire for adventure in nature and reconnect with it through my photographic exploits. With each place visited, I gathered more and more courage in understanding my abilities and others’ love, admiration and encouragement that what I was doing, albeit it crazy, was beautiful and inspiring to those around me. So, with each passing day I work toward a goal of freedom, a goal of self-expression through creativity and one filled with adventure, spiritual awakening and the desire to fulfill a life of purpose that honors the most essential and basic spark, our life’s force.
Our life force is a fleeting yet significant spark. Our life is either filled with things that bring us joy or things that remain elusive and moreover, unfulfilling. Rarely are we in a position to do what we wish for ourselves because we are caught in a complex trap of being told what we should do, or even worse, we are blind to the fact that we are actually listening to what others tell us we were supposed to do without even knowing it. I always tell those closest to me to focus on what you have direct control over. Do not focus on anything that you do not control as those circumstances are a waste of your time. With this in mind, I focus on the things that I can directly change and thereby affect the outcome. In this way, I bring about change within myself by reflecting daily, asking myself what I wish to achieve from this journey, ensuring that I am true to those goals and in doing so, knowing that my direct purpose is to connect with nature, capturing rare moments in the world and sharing them with others. With these goals in mind, I hope to share the beauty of the earth with those who choose to enjoy my work and hopefully they too will see the beauty that surrounds us all allowing for a small spark of change to start within themselves as well. To honor your life is something of your greatest purpose, to love others and to share the joy of this journey is a keystone part of this life which makes it so worth living and so worth pursuing. Reconnecting with nature in its purest sense of the word, is a place where we honor where we came from and in the same stroke, a place where we will all return; to honor this purity is to honor one’s self.