Patience, Practice, Light and Luck

People often used to ask the secret to good photography and I would always say the same thing:
Patience, Practice, Light and Luck. It seemed to me that if you put all four elements together, you could hardly go wrong.

Our journey on this earth is like that as well, a process of learning and combining elements to find our particular place and our particular peace. It's different for all but we do share some common paths and highways - the real trick may be to travel without driving others off the road. Tolerance is too often more an aspiration than a reality, kindness takes more time than we have to spare, and serenity of mind hangs just out of reach. It takes all our will and energy just to not lose ground. The world has become incomprehensible to me lately, an alien place where greed and brutality have gotten a foothold, where corruption breeds and multiplies, where justice and mercy are both for sale. Fairness goes to the highest bidder, accountability only has meaning when it's the end product of being caught and even then consequences fade away for those who need them the most. We have come to a place where we would rather be at war than at ease or at peace, a strange place indeed, barely recognizable and harsh.

It's time to take a step back and concentrate on the small picture, to search for a smidgen of good news amid the bad, of kindness amid the cruelty. I don't find it in politics or religion or the economy. I don't find it in the justice system or the oil companies, the banks or the insurance cartels. Neither the local or national news cover it.

Although usually not a sentimentalist, I do still often think of my daddy's conviction that humankind is basically good and I think it's possible that I'm looking in the wrong places. Turning inward is most always the court of last resort for all of us.

My, but the world would be such a lovelier place were we all to follow our own good advice.

Sooner the wheels fall off,
Longer this world will spin aroud.

Brian Martin