Pep Talk #11: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

“One of the best ways to make yourself happy in the present is to recall happy times from the past. Photos are a great memory-prompt, and because we tend to take photos of happy occasions, they weight our memories to the good.” –Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

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First Mate Tanya & the Crew of Take Two in the Tongue of the Ocean, Bahamas, 2014

If my title holds water, I can stop right here and save you my ruminations…but of course I’m more of a writer than a photographer, so you know I’m going to say something anyway. I’ve been using some of the endless expanse of time after school and chores are done to go through old photographs. Our external storage drive is full of folders like this: “Unprocessed 2014.” That’s a photo-dump—every picture we took in 2014, un-sorted, un-edited, sometimes un-looked-at since it was taken. I’m enjoying, organizing, and labeling the happy moments in our life at a time when everything else looks like it’s heading to hell-in-a-handbasket.

There is a lot of bad news right now, and not just in the mainstream news. I have friends in low places, countries where children are dying of malnutrition faster than people in cities are dying of the new virus. Things that were bad before seem to be getting even worse. Like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, reports of disease, famine, violence, and death come riding across the internet, and even though I would like to close my eyes and stop my ears, some of these stories are touching people who are like family to me. My heart is breaking, and yet I still have to function in the day-to-day. I’ll let you know when I figure out how to get through a day without springing leaks.

I know we’re supposed to live in the present, but when the present is dark, we can also dig into the treasure-trove of the past. No matter what happens going forward, here’s something that can’t be taken away: yesterday’s happy memories. We stored them up for such a time as this.

Today I found this one: on a hot and boring passage to the Bahamas, we did what we often do, put the engines in neutral, toss drift lines off the transoms, and jump in. We were crossing the Tongue of the Ocean—1000 fathoms of indigo water. If you put on a mask and look down, it gives you the feeling of standing on the old Sears Tower lookout deck (now Skydeck Chicago), more a fear of heights than of depths. You feel like a water strider on a pond, and the next step in your imagination is the predator from the deep coming up for a snack. It’s terrifying, invigorating, and fun. I will never forget that day, and I loved having the photo to bring it to the surface.

So many times since we returned from the Caribbean in July, I have found myself expressing gratitude for our travel memories. I’m so happy that we took the plunge, sold our house, and went sailing with our children. I know you have memories of happy times, too: dredge them up and let them bring you joy.

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