Up Close and Personal

I received a fabulous gift of a macro lens. It has changed my perspective and my photographs already. 

A friend told me my photographs make him feel closer to God. I replied that God is, after all, the big macro lens. God is in the details. We're not much without his ability to magnify and cannot forget that our role is to glorify, whether or not we have the perfect job or a full line-up of clients.

I tried out the new lens on a fly on the jack-o-lantern on Halloween. Poor Jack was a bit on the rotten side, sagging with his insides a slimy pool. The fly had already planned where his next several meals were coming from and kindly didn't budge from Jack’s eye while I tried to get my settings right.  It isn't one of my best photographs.  But life is like that.  Sometimes you macro a mediocre picture.

Looking at the details is something I have been doing in other parts of my life, too.  You can’t take a macro lens to yourself and photograph without a certain amount of subjectivity.  In our world, it is too easy to select the “trash” icon to eliminate what we don't want to see.  Exposing the details that might not always be so comfortable is what introspection and job hunting are all about. 

The gift of the lens as a good sign that I am about to start a new step in this process.  For months, I have looked closely at what I like to do and what I don't, what I am good at and what I'm not so good at.  Each macro step I take gives me a better picture of what the whole me really is and where I need to be.  This is all about dissecting down to the tiny details to see what you're made of.

Sometimes I take a step back because I don't love everything I see and if I am not careful I lose confidence, focus on the amplified negativity of the situation of my unemployment and its growing ranks.  It's like peeling an onion, only to find that it still smells like an onion, makes you cry more the further you cut into it, and sometimes there are ugly pieces inside that need to be discarded. And so it goes.

The resume, but one tool in the job-hunting kit, is designed to give the big picture of you so that potential employers can drill down and magnify the parts they are interested in.  It should be the book jacket of the best seller that is the employed me.  I can’t wait to take that photograph!

If I could take the macro lens to my eating habits, I wonder if I would find the reason why eating and cooking give me comfort.  Why is eating salad is not as comforting as eating garlic cheese grits with shrimp and collard greens?

There are endless analogies for this period of my life and I am choosing to focus on the positive ones, amplifying the things that are helpful and growth-inducing such as realizing that I really do want to run a nonprofit organization one day and that I love being in a consulting role when I can help nonprofits gain insight and move forward.  

When I get tired of focusing on the job hunt, I can take my camera and my new macro lens to the garden or down the street to the park and capture the tiny parts of leaves, plants, crawling things and other amazing works of our God who is so into the details.  Even turnips look good with the macro lens!

Chinese Guests Help Define Wealth

Last night we hosted a pot luck dinner for friends and neighbors to meet our Chinese guests. Everyone brought something that was regional, from their hometowns or grown in their gardens. We had a map of the US so that friends could show our guests where they were born and even take a few minutes to talk about it. This sparked much conversation and it was a lively evening that everyone seemed to enjoy. I may have been the most blessed, however.

[We were so busy with other interesting conversation that the bicycle incident of the morning was not discussed. ]

We asked the Chinese guests many questions, from what life was like in China to inquiries about family members, work and the economy. They asked us questions about our families, where we live and our lives. A serious discussion of economics took place between one of the men and one of the Chinese women.

They wanted to know what the "middle class" was like and noted the wealth of food and "things" in my home and thought I must be "upper class". Unemployed since January and struggling to get my first consulting client for my LLC, I was aghast to think someone would consider me to be upper class. "But you have too much to be middle class," one said. This was a casual observation on her part, but for me a most interesting perspective. When I am spending too much time on the "pity pot", feeling poor, worrying about how I will make ends meet down the road if the employment situation does not improve, and not recognizing my obvious wealth in the eyes of others I will remember that and "get off the pot".

These ladies are college professors and well educated. Their textbooks, and likely the professors they learned from, taught them that middle class is simply average and clearly we live better than the average lives they know in China. But certainly I would not consider myself to be upper class. In classrooms far away, the definitions are more rigid and do not take into consideration the vast differences in regions of the US and of the world. Our standards are very high in this metropolitan area. People have a lot of money (and debt) and possessions. We seek more wealth, acquire more things, and do not appreciate that we are already wealthy in the eyes of many. In short, we do not appreciate enough what we have.

It took that simple observation from a Chinese college professor to make me think that I need to re-examine my priorities during this extended time of opportunity for reflection that I have been "gifted" via unemployment. I am in so many ways very wealthy. I have food for my table, friends who are worth their weight in gold, children who are truly my greatest gift from God, family members who are inspirational, and many opportunities available to me. In the eyes of others I am wealthy, and I thank my Chinese guests for helping me to more fully recognize that I have been blessed with many riches.