Dissolve

When I suggested the title of this post to several people, each of them said it should be about relationships (one did say cleaning). And in a way, it probably will. I thought it interesting that relationships wasn’t the first idea that I had though. I actually got stuck with the idea of making juice from a powdered concentrate for a long time. I knew that wouldn’t make a very interesting post, so I tried to think of something different.

I have been playing with digital photographs quite a bit the last few weeks. It has been a lot of fun to see what I can do with them. One way I’ve enjoyed playing with them is making the background basically dissolve away. It lets certain parts of the photo stand out that you might not have noticed before. It lets you focus on the subject of the photo rather than be distracted by everything else that was in the frame.

An example:

Photo A:

It’s a nice photo, but at first glance you’re probably wondering why I took a picture of the ground.

But if I dissolve out the background you get this:

Photo 2:

And suddenly it becomes clear that there is a chipmunk in the picture. By letting other things lose focus, you are able to focus on what is important.

It’s not really that hard to do that with pictures. Doing it in life is a bit harder though. In life it can be hard to focus on the important things, to keep your priorities straight, or even to just focus on the moment. It can be hard to let the past and future dissolve away and just be there in the present. I often find myself living in more than one place. I’m reliving what I did in the past and working out what I’m going to do in the future.

Yet those times when I do let everything else dissolve, when the only time that exists is now, the only place that exists is where I am, and the only people in the world are the ones I am with, those are magical moments.

I had a few of those moments this weekend. It was a bit strange at first to discover that the only thoughts I had were about the moment and I was no longer thinking about anything else. But letting myself sink into that moment, really enjoying it and experiencing it rather than trying to keep half of my mind elsewhere, it was a wonderful moment.42D

It’s those moments that make up life. When everything else draws our focus away from the moment we are in we can get easily distracted and miss the small beauties of life. Let your worries dissolve into the background and focus on what is important.

I think Elder M. Russell Ballard‘s advice to mothers could be said to all people:

First, recognize that the joy of motherhood comes in moments. There will be hard times and frustrating times. But amid the challenges, there are shining moments of joy and satisfaction.

Author Anna Quindlen reminds us not to rush past the fleeting moments. She said: “The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less” (Loud and Clear [2004], 10-11).

(M. Russell Ballard, “Daughters of God,” Ensign, May 2008, 109)

The joy of life comes in moments. I hope I can live more in those moments and let the rest of the world dissolve away more often.