Viewing entries tagged
love

One year

A year ago, Rach and I got married. In a beautiful mess of laughter and tears and kisses, we put rings on fingers, made vows and commitments, and danced through the night. It was a powerful day, a chapter shift, a line-in-the-sand for us. A rebirth.

Today we are in a little cabin on Prevelly beach, a few hours south of Perth. This campsite is special to us now - we tented here for our honeymoon, and are back for our anniversary. It's 5:30 in the morning, and Rach is still asleep. The walls of the cabin are kind of magical - they seem solid, but they let in every bit of the chill from outside, so I'm already awake. Rach of course is completely content in a 5-degree climate, but I can't feel my toes.

There is a pigeon somewhere outside, who has been releasing a slow and rhythmic chant solidly for the last hour, like a priestly mantra, covering the campsite in a resonant blessing: "whooot... whooot... whooot..." There are finches at the window, back for more breadcrumbs, and I can just hear the distant crash of the tide on rocks.

If I'm honest, it's not just my frozen toes that are keeping me awake. I'm thinking too much. And there is some fear, too. It's been a year since we married, five years all up since we even met. We stripped away all our security and careers and started a whole new life together, and it's been mind-bogglingly amazing. And impossibly hard. We started with love, a love that immediately sunk deep into our cores, and has held us together through all the things.

But in these early hours, I sometimes wonder if love is enough. This is a world of hustle and progress, where we have to make real-life grown-up decisions every day. We have to work and provide for our family, and do all the responsible life things. Am I being naive to make "love" my life's priority?

The pigeon continues to whoot, and I carefully roll myself out of bed. My toes are mutinous, avoiding the cold floorboards so that I am waddling on my heels and the sides of my feet. I penguin my way across to my shoes and pull them on, barely keeping my balance, then step out into the morning.

It's cold outside, but no colder than inside, thanks to our magical cabin walls. On this day a year ago it was not as cold, but I remember Rach and I watching the sky all day, watching the clouds gather closer and darker over our outdoor ceremony space. We would look up to the sky, and then look at each other, and then one of us would remind the other "hey, I love you," and we would agree that no, the clouds won't break our day, and that yes, we would totally do our first dance in the rain.

It did rain in the end, but later on when everyone was inside. And we did dance in the rain, just a bit, before running for cover.

The beach is only a couple of minutes walk from the cabin, not enough to actually warm up, so I find myself too soon stationary again, standing at the shoreline with arms wrapped around arms like an octopus in a straight jacket, my eyes on the horizon. I can't hear the pigeon's blessing anymore, just the ocean's soft applause, and the fizz of the tide soaking into the sand at my feet.

I stare into the horizon, a blinding white that splits the blues of ocean and sky, and send my questions across the waters:

"Have I made the right choices for my wife and kids?"
"Am I being responsible enough?"
"Am I putting too much faith in love?"
"Am I a good husband?"

In the bright silence, I wonder if there even are answers for such questions. I close my eyes and slow my breathing and try and listen anyway.

I hear the fizz of the tide. A seagull cawing overhead. The slap and crash of waves on rocks.

I hear Rach, a year ago today, reading her vows to me. She declares her security is in our love. She says she is so proud of the way we forge our lives together. She tells me I am her home, and it is a joy to build it together. She says we are a shiny mess of potential, and that we live our lives in uncertainty, and that is what allows such an exaltation of our spirits.

I hear the ocean's applause.

--

Rach finds me a little later on the front porch of our cabin. The sunlight is stronger now, but I am still wrapped in a blanket. Her toes seem completely content out here in the chill. She nuzzles her face into my neck, and then peers over to the notebook on my lap. I've copied out a page from Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet", and she smiles in recognition as she reads:

You have been told also that life is darkness...
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself,
and to one another, and to God.

Like-minded vs like-hearted

This week, I spent a lot of hours writing a thing. I had an idea, and was focussed on sharing it, pushing my opinion, convincing my readers that the idea is true. I was going to post it today.

But then I read it. And then I trashed it.

I realised that I was writing so that others would agree with me. Like-minded others who would rally to my side, while I shared a polaric opinion about something I honestly didn’t know enough about.

There is a great difference, it turns out, between being like-minded and being like-hearted.

Like-minded people gather together and agree, and rant against those that disagree. We form groups and sides, and double down on our beliefs and stances and our right-ness.

Like-hearted people, in contrast, gather on the plain of love, acceptance, and difference. We believe different things on the surface, we can disagree, and have totally unique life experiences. But we stay together to learn from each other: perspectives, opinions, wisdom from other angles.

I often find it difficult to engage with a single-minded writer. They either have me on their side, or they don't, and then they are just trying to convince me of something. That's fine for a science paper, but it's not STORY.

Storytelling is all about like-heartedness. All writers have deep beliefs and opinions, but the great ones never explicitly need to share them. They wrap their world views in a trojan horse of shared narrative experience, allowing their audience to walk with them and draw their own conclusions in their own time.

Storytelling invites everyone in. It may seem like the softest tool of revolution, but it honestly has the most power to actually change someone’s mind. Living like-heartedly means you don’t have to convince, win or own. You just have to invite, and listen, and share the stories.

The gold we don't know we have

Some beautiful friends will meet us at a cafe in an hour. It's been a while since we've caught up, and they have stories to share: stories of losing a baby, of living through cancer, of managing rambunctious kids, of working in their own businesses, of just trying to survive.

I wonder how their faith is now. And their relationship? Do they still have that spark, that driving love for each other that was so evident the moment they met? How hard is life for them, and how can Rach and I best give love? Be love?

What is it, to be a friend?

Perhaps, it is to sit with when times are hard. To encourage when feeling down. To listen more than speak. To intuit, towards wisdom. To be love, in as many different forms as possible.

Also, perhaps, it is to create experiences that last. Tell a story that is funny. Remind them that they are loveable. Place them in a scene where they are the hero. Encourage the parts of them that they can’t draw out on their own today.

I don't have the answers. This isn't that kind of post. And I'm honestly not very good at maintaining a lot of friends. But I'm tremendously interested, as an observer and a participant in this magic that happens between friends. There seems to be a third entity that is created when two people converse: something neither of us could create on our own. In community, we seem to draw out parts of each other that are hidden.

We mine the gold we don't even know the other has, and the tools of discovery are love, encouragement and compassion.

I would like today's conversation to be something like that. Just find the gold, allow it to be its own expansive entity, and when we say our goodbyes, we all somehow walk away with the treasure.

On the road: Basel, Switzerland

A few years ago Rach and I did some work for Roche Pharmaceuticals. With all the pharma-politics in play right now, I thought this memory from March 2019 was worth sharing.

—

We saw the tower before we even entered the country. And we watched it until our wheels hit the runway.

It's not that it's particularly big, but more, that it's alone. Every other structure is regular-sized: Houses and apartments and commercial buildings, all obeying the usual sizing rules of ancient European cities. But the Roche tower is a completely different creation. It stands tall and singular, like the first kid in school to hit her growth spurt. But without the awkward.

It's stands there, an alien beacon awaiting re-enforcements, breathing in 5% of the entire population of the city, like a scheduled apocalypse. 7:00am and they're all gone. And those left behind go about their day until the sunset return of all those who were taken, blinking in the afterglow of sunlight they never saw, wondering what's for dinner, and where the time went.

At least, that was the conclusion I drew, standing on the Wettsteinbrücke bridge overlooking the Rhine, with the softly spectacular homes of Basel Switzerland lining the shores. And that peerless tower, quietly breaking the horizon.

I watched the kaleidoscope sky reflect off the tower's shiny faces and sharp edges, and concluded that a corporate pharmaceutical juggernaut had landed in this quaint town, and is now feeding on the townsfolk, and honestly, how would you even say no to such a beast? We have bills to pay, loved ones to create experiences with, families to care for. We all need money. We all need to live.

I stood on that bridge, and compared the reflections: The crystal windows of the tower, and the slow running river below me. Clinical perfection, versus organic flow. Solidity and Fluidity.
Future and Nature.
The windows were winning, as far as clarity went.

Rach stood beside me, and I'm sure we were thinking the same thing:

What have we subscribed to here?
What possible part can we play in this world of billion-dollar pharma players?

Our message is one of empowerment and empathy, love over fear, celebrating difference and diversity. Who, in that tower, will listen, or even care?

--

The next morning, we were taken to the top floor. I could see France to the left, and Germany to the right. And below me, our enormous shadow, stretching across houses and spaces for blocks and blocks in the early morning light.

I wondered what it would be like to live in that shadow. Sunrise, but no sun. Just the monolith. The whole street would feel colder.

And then we were into it. Our workshop room had the most enormous table I'd ever seen. Someone flipped a switch, and the floor to ceiling curtains glided open, revealing a sunlit green courtyard, scattered with employees drinking their coffees and sharing their perspectives on, I don't know, world domination.

And then our people arrived. Scientists, researchers, health professionals, patient liaison experts. All serving in the Rare Disease Space. And all completely exceptional humans.

All my preempted judgements, all our fears of distant corporate robots, were just blown away by the absolute humanity of these attendees. They were passionate about their work. They want to save lives. They are searching for solutions that don't yet exist.

There were tears, and honesty, and vulnerability, and an overwhelming sense of love.

Yep. These aliens love us.

Turns out, this tower is filled with people who care about people. They've moved cities and countries to be a part of the team. To find cures, and solutions, for others in pain. They work long hours, they give up their own comforts, in the hope of finding needles in haystacks. We spoke to one researcher who has a child of her own with a rare condition that doesn't yet have a cure. But her job is finding a cure for a different condition, one that will save other children's lives but not her own. She works extra hard because she knows the pain the other parents are feeling, and she has to trust that somewhere else, there is a researcher close to a cure for her own child.

It's like this whole industry rests on faith. A daily belief that there is more to learn, more to find. Solutions still to be uncovered. Techniques still to be unearthed. There's this tenacity for justice, that declares "This is not right, and someone needs to fight for it".

I know Roche is a pharma giant. But inside those walls, we met the people doing the work, and in the rare disease space at least, they are doing the work of justice, and miracles. Inside those walls, there are thousands of people dedicating their lives to other people.

I know nothing is perfect, and I know corruption is everywhere. I grew up in a church, that I loved, so I'm well aware of the negative power of the institution. But what I saw in church is what I see in Roche:

Despite the corporation, despite the external shell of power and profits and popularity, there are thousands of people with hearts of gold, giving their lives for something meaningful and needed in this world.

Behind all the sharp corporate edges, beat soft warm hearts, and they are well worth appreciating, and applauding.

I never wanted to be a photographer

I never wanted to be a photographer.

I wanted to be a storyteller. I wanted to tell people stories about themselves. The kinds of stories they should already know, but had somehow lost along the way.

Stories like,
“You are amazing.”
“You are resilient.”
“You are broken, but also whole.”
“You are love(d).”

So I picked up a camera, and stepped into the world of weddings, and showed these amazing couples the sparks between them. I wanted them to know that the most magic thing about their wedding wasn’t the party, nor the vows and promises. It wasn’t even that they were loved.
The most magic thing, was that they themselves, were love. That’s the story I’ve been telling in every wedding I’ve every shot.