If I were living in the world of Marvel Comics and I were a member of the X-Men, I’m pretty sure my mutant power would be my uncanny (pun fully intended, for my nerd brethren out there) ability to always be just a little bit out of frame on nearly every picture that’s ever been taken with me around. I might think I was a vampire, but I can see my reflection in the mirror so that shoots that idea. It’s not that I consciously try to avoid having pictures taken with me in them, neither do people go out of their way to not take them of me, or with me in them. It just kinda happens that way.
So I got to thinking about that over the last couple days (yeah, I just might be running out of things to meditate on). Could it be something subconscious? Am I avoiding being photographed without even being aware I’m doing so? Maybe something different and not so obvious at first? So, what did I come up with? Yes, I subconsciously avoid it. I feel like the camera is stealing my soul.
Okay, bear with me on that one. It’s not as oogy-boogy (to borrow a term from MythBuster Adam Savage) as it sounds at first…
I’m a firm believer in the “you are who you are, not who you were” concept. Everyone is always changing, every moment of their life. Sometimes so gradually and imperceptibly that we stop being aware it’s even happening, but change persists whether we’re acknowledging it or not. The soul is always growing.
The things with photographs are, they always show you as you were, not as you are. It takes a thing in perpetual motion and ongoing evolution and locks it in time, as if to shoot a bird from the sky. It’s already inaccurate just in the time it takes to snap the photo. That person represented within it no longer exists.
It’s the difference between looking at a picture of the Aurora Borealis versus standing in the cold northern air and watching them dance across the sky. The difference between looking at a picture of the surf in Hawaii, versus watching the waves crash against the beach and fill your breath with the salty air.
It’s not the same.
So, when I am photographed, it’s as if someone has grabbed my soul from me and trapped in a little cage for all time. It can never grow, it can never evolve. It is stuck there, stifled and unchanging. It shows who I was, not who I am. It’s punching a hole in time and making a window into the past, which isn’t always bad, but I strive to keep looking forward as much as I can.
Okay, so it was a little oogy-boogy after all. Or perhaps, to quote Kari Byron (Two MythBusters quotes in one post? Gotta be a record!), it’s a bit of “crystal-gripping hippie nonsense”. *grin*
I really need to research some new meditation topics and visualizations. *laugh*