Day 11 - 5 minutes late

The old saying 'A picture is worth a thousand words' comes to mind this morning as I sit here with pictures of lots of things going through my head.  Experiences, feelings, emotions about places I have been, people I have met and things I have done.

As I look back through old photos I have taken, I notice that with some I feel different than I used to.  In fact, I don't see them as I did before, maybe because I now have different experiences than I did then.  Life is different than it used to be.  I am in a different mental place.

Explain, you say?  OK, here goes.

The photo below I took about 5 years ago.  I was with a group of other people who, like me, love photography.  The place we were visiting was a harsh place, one where people went when they had done horrible and unspeakable things.  It was an abandoned prison.  It was a cold and uneasy feeling place with colorless buildings, relics from the past when the men who were forced to live here knew they would only leave thru death.  The fence lines were all topped with the harshest of barbed and razor wire eliminating any way to escape. 

When you see this photo, do you see the barbs?  Do you see the inmates who were forever locked away? Do you see the harshness? Or...do you allow yourself to notice the sky behind in it beautiful blue with puffy whiteness?  Do you see the heart-shapes made from those lines of wire?   Do you allow your mind to wander, hoping to find the beauty in even the harshest of things?  I think that is what I was hoping when I first took this photo.  I knew where I was physically, but looking back I see that I felt there mentally and emotionally as well.  I was not where I wanted to be but in a way, I was where I was supposed to be at the time.  Back then, I just saw the hearts instead of just sharp wires. The artist in me loved the contrast of the stark blackness to the delicate blues and whites. 

Now, not only do I see the hearts but I also see the top too lines as having indications of heartbeats within it, almost playing on the hearts below signifying something living in the photo...compassion, love perhaps?

The beauty of growing older is we have more experiences with which to review and learn from.  Those experiences ever changing who we are and how we see and feel things in or present.  The challenge is not being limited by those things we 'see' and allowing ourselves to also feel and imagine. 

Challenge accepted!