Only a Snapshot

Pictured below is some random person maybe like you or me.  His mind is whirling about considering problems and decisions yet to make. He is reflecting on years past and years to come. He is wondering about whether to take action on reports just in. He may even be wondering on his children’s health and how they are doing in their classes. He may have a slight muscle pull in his right thigh, but you’ll never know. It’s humid today and his arthritis is troublesome – the price of rail-splitting years ago. He didn’t sleep well last night but must perform today, and he struggles on. He has meetings in the afternoon with a dozen of people he doesn’t like, and later must write letters of condolence to families. He yearns for the peace of mind that may never come and is ever worried about those depending on him. All the while he hopes for good news from Grant.

He does have issues similar to you and me, with only their magnitude and consequence in the balance. He is gone and you are here. All we see is a blink of his time, just as a future relative may see your picture.  So real, so dynamic, so alive but so fixed in permanent imagery. The picture is a deception of a living being, full of what was and that yet to be. It is the ultimate stop-action, stopping all that is living, giving us only a snapshot dividing past and future.

When you see a picture of yourself from years ago, you see a flood of memories, connections, relations, hope, dreams, and all. When another sees it, they see only a snapshot, with no clue given to its surrounding life. Fixed in time, stationary, rigid, motionless, it conceals a full life. The mastery of the artist is to reveal beyond. Like the photo, most do not.

So, we see the photo is only a snapshot, revealing so very little.