(Morgan supplied me with five words that reminded her of me to write about. Let me know if you’d like me to give you five words. )
Reverend
I include the word “Reverend” in my online Persona (which is really just regular ole me with a bit more courage). Many people have mistaken this to mean that I am a Reverend of a Church. While I am, in fact, a Reverend of a Church, it isn’t the Church that comes to their mind and that’s not what this word signifies for me.
Reverend is defined as “worthy of adoration or reverence”, and reverence, basically, means respect. It’s my not so subtle way of indicating that what I have to say is important and that my words and I should be respected. I don’t mean this in an elitist way. I believe everyone to be worthy of reverence when they take an honest chunk of themselves and cast it out there for all to see, no matter the nature of that work, the medium it’s presented in, or the meaningful nature of it to a particular recipient.
Chaotic
It’s interesting to me that this word was even selected. Chaos is the natural state of everything and, simultaneously, the enemy to all that we’ve built and organized. To be Chaotic is to be pure and raw and elemental; to allow ourselves to attain the most natural state we can imagine. Yet, at the same time, it is destructive. And destruction can be good, necessary even. But at some point, destruction is wasteful and, eventually, irreparable.
Photo
Photographs are a moment in time. A slice of reality with a frame drawn around it and everything else erased. If you compare a photographer to a painter there are equivalents. A painter applies paint, a photographer, however, captures light. A painter applies it to a canvas, while a photographer captures his on some film or a digital sensor. But the tool the painter relies on most is his brush. For a photographer, this tool is four edges. That’s right. The very box that bounds the photo is what changes photography from a technical trade into an art form.
History
History is really the only thing that separates us from monkeys. History allows us to learn, not only from our own mistakes and successes, but from the mistakes and successes of those before us. If someone hadn’t collected and shared the concept of Algebra, for instance, we’d be limited to what one man could figure out in a single lifetime. History brings each of us an opportunity for eternity. And in that same way, the destruction of history is the destruction of that life.
I rarely build something that I don’t intend to keep some aspect of. Even the failed relationships of my past have left me with puddles of goodness. So good, in fact, that many of those relationships have been rebuilt into something even better than they were before.
Fatherhood
This is single most amazing adventure I’ve ever been on. And, in the big picture, it’s only just the beginning. Nothing could have possibly prepared me for the feeling I had the first time that little creature, my own creation — an organic, natural, earthly miracle — wrapped her tiny hand around my finger. I know it’s an instinct and had little to nothing to do with me. But I didn’t care. I was hooked. This little girl would rule my entire world and I would happily let her do so.