What are your priorities?
Have your priorities changed over the almost 10 weeks of this lockdown? What are your priorities?
It happens that our priorities are not always obvious to ourselves. When we are questioned about what is important to us we stop and think for a while. Perhaps we imagine what it would feel like to lose certain things, or we imagine how happy we would be if we gained other things. Our priorities change as we get older and as our circumstances change…
Times of change and uncertainty often wake us up to what is really important in life. When things run along smoothly we don’t question our lives very much. I am finding that as the reality of the COVID 19 crisis bites into my life I am looking closely at what is really important to me. Turns out it isn’t a new watch, a bigger car, an extra camera or a new pair of Kurt Geiger trousers.
Sure all those fancy things are nice, but are they priorities? Are those physical things that I am concerned about in this time of crisis? I wake up in the morning on another day of lockdown and look around and I see what is important to me. It is my family.
Family can be expensive, argumentative, difficult at times, but there is no doubt that my family is my number one priority. My family is my biggest support, motivator, and joy. Fortunately, I have a lot of my family around me but as is the case in modern life my extended family is scattered. Some of my family has passed on and all I have of them is precious memories and photographs.
You know that old joke about the barber’s children having the worst haircuts in town? Well, that is a real thing, that’s what makes it funny. The barber is so busy cutting the hair of other people’s children that his own never get the attention that they should. Turns out the truth of this joke extends to photographers as well. I will get back to this point.
When this COVID 19 lockdown ends and life slowly gets back to normal, for those of us fortunate enough to survive and have a normal, I am definitely not going to allow myself to slide back into old bad habits. I would like to be a kinder and more caring person. I would like to show my family in all sorts of ways how important they are to me. I want to be more understanding, gentler, generous, and more patient and loving.
Coming back to the joke about the barber and his children with the bad haircuts. There is something I want to do for myself. I am planning a photoshoot of my family. I want to remember these times. I want an amazing set of photographs of my wife, of my children. Group photos and photographs of them individually. I have been doing family portrait photography professionally for many years and I am actually very good at it. I am planning to take photos that show may families character, their quirks, the little gestures, and expressions that show who they are. A memento of my love for them and a reminder to myself of just how important they are to me. I want to put a photograph in my wallet and a big print on my wall, beautifully framed.
Old fashioned perhaps. Some would call it sentimental even, but my family is my priority and I want to express that. I want a daily reminder of what is important to me. If any good can come from this crisis let it be that we can all get back to basics and remember what is truly important in life.