Every Sunday, on my own blog, I go off the topic of business and marketing. It’s the one day of the week I share whatever it is I’m feeling. Sometimes I hit one out of the park; other times, I miss the ball completely. I recently shared this post and got some nice feedback.
Based on what so many of us are feeling these days, optimism is often buried under the stress of trying to rebuild your business, worrying about our family, and trying to answer the question of “What now?”
To think through something to write about, I took a break, which lasted almost an hour. I grabbed a camera and went outside to photograph the Florida Powder Puff bush that’s in bloom on the side of the house.
Well, two things happened. First, I was struck by the contrast around each flower. New buds yet to bloom waited their turn in line behind those in full bloom and those already long gone. Each cluster represented three generations. And as each flower died, the color changed to a muddy purple, then brown, and then waited to fall to the ground.
The second was my focus and composition. I love playing with depth of field. When you’re the client, the specs are whatever your heart desires. Plus, once I uploaded the images, the next challenge was composition and what I wanted to crop and share.
Stay with me because I have a point beyond being hokey and a little trite…
We’ve been hunkered down for over nine months in a state of sensory deprivation when it comes to contact with family and friends. By the time we finally get our turn in line for the vaccine and are comfortable getting back out, it’s going to be a year. Our lives have changed, and our depth of field has become so narrow consisting of Sheila, me, and two pups. Yet, just outside our point of focus, friends, family, restaurants, and life as we knew it are all there waiting. And everybody is in the same boat.
And there’s my point – we all have the power to select our point of focus. As simplistic as it sounds, the whole exercise got me thinking about the future and the pure joy of getting back to a level of normalcy. I’ve spent too much time thinking about the freedom we’ve lost and forgetting to appreciate and be grateful for everything we still have.
Everything we do and have needs to be kept in perspective, and to Jeff Dixon’s quote below, it’s sometimes hard to stay focused on what we all still have. It’s all going to come back, and in the end, each of us will be stronger and more appreciative of so many little things we took for granted.
Sometimes we focus so much on what we don’t have that we fail to see,
appreciate and use what we do have.
Jeff Dixon
