Sometimes I take pictures of my family in the evenings, sitting with their occupations: books, or toys, mother with child, child with trucks. I take pictures to remind my future Self of a time when I was happy--when nothing was wrong, when the troubles that inevitably arise have not yet bared their fangs.
And yet, behind these pictures, I am also often sad. The causes are small, but numerous: petty slights, personal struggles, lost opportunities, failed efforts, grieving friends. My children grow, and I mourn the loss of each month while still rejoicing in the next.
Meanwhile, I maintain the pragmatic expectation that true troubles lie ahead. We will be sick, or hungry, or there will be injury and fear, or there will be discord and conflict. Life is a wheel that does not stay fixed in place.
When those days come, I will look back on these happy times and I will forget the small troubles that now loom so strangely large. And in the light of this expectation, this analytic likelihood, I am warmly reminded of how small my current troubles truly are. In context, a coin can be the size of the Sun; but it is not the size of the Sun.
Therefore, I take my pictures of these trouble-free days, these splendid times, this golden age--and in the view forced by this simple click, my troubles dim to gray.
Sep. 2016
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