Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

“Poverty with a view.” Spoken by a waitress in Jackson, Wyoming, bordering Grand Teton National Park who lived fifty miles away and drove to work every day because she couldn’t afford a place to live where she worked. The same thing would be applicable to most of the national parks, and state parks, everywhere. The Appalachian wilderness is beautiful, but it is no place to make a living. Taoist poets in 500 BCE China were destitute. Life without money has been the rule through the ages, and beautiful surroundings are very little help in making ends meet. We live with anomaly and make the best of it. Squaring ourselves up with disparity is the way it is for most of us worldwide, and those who do the best job of doing that live with low expectations and very little in the way of opinions, like corks on the water, leaves in the wind. Doing what needs to be done, when, where and how it needs to be done, as Lao Tzu put it in The Tao Te Ching, “Do your work and sit back, let nature take its course.” Accommodating ourselves to the world rather than expecting the world to accomodate itself to us.

We find our pace and our place, figure out where we belong and where we have no business being, know what we enjoy and what we can do without and spend our time with the things that are right for us, letting it all come together and pass as a life well done. I am happy to have been here, but would have preferred to have had better choices. I cannot think of anything that wouldn’t be improved with better choices. But we take what we are given and do the best we can with it, and let that be that, as the old Taoist said. (He actually said, “Do your work and step aside, let nature take its course.) Like a cork on the water, a leaf in the wind.

Looking for what is looking for us is the lifelong search for what needs us to do it here, now. We know what’s what here, now, but we don’t know what’s next. That is entirely “Wait and See,” hoping we will know it when we see it. Which is where intuition comes into play in guiding us along the way. Our place is to trust ourselves to our intuition and be patient with the process of finding our way through our life one “Here we are, now what?” at a time.

Knowing when to draw the line and knowing where to draw it are the two most important qualities in human beings. Every other characteristic pales in comparison. And how do we know? This question ranks right up there with, “How do we learn how and when to swallow?” Practically every living thing knows how and when to swallow! HOW do they know? That question is right up there with, “How do they know when and where to draw the line?” They all know. None of them know how they know. And that is true of all of the important things. We know but we don’t know how we know. I recommend paying attention to the things we know without knowing how we know. I think we will all be amazed at how much we know that we have never been taught. I know that I am amazed by something else every day.

We live for the joy and the wonder of being alive. Forget getting/having/getting what we want, and simply be amazed at what a miracle this life is. This world we live on is astounding and we rarely notice it or bother to be “peacefully abiding here, now.” But, the splendors, they are a plenty. All we have to do is open our eyes and ears to know it is so. As Jesus said, and would say again to us, “You have eyes! Open them! You have ears! Listen! Let’s do!

If someone asks you if you believe in God, ask them for their understanding of the psychological mechanism of “Projection.” And in response to whatever they say, ask how that might apply to the word, “God.” My point being that there is nothing to the word “God” that is not projection.

One of the eternal wonders of being human is that we never get it all said. Every realization is but the beginning of a new search for the next realization. The way to the Way never end. “Oh! NOW I SEE!” is just another step on the way to seeing all there is to see. We never see all there is to see. Always, always, looking out the window leads to something never before considered. Never before said. And this doesn’t take into account the things we have seen a thousand times and seeing it again as though for the first time! We will never get to the bottom of it! And that, itself, is another wonder of being alive!

I like wandering around, seeing what’s there. It’s a different way of looking out the window, only I can stop and take a picture. I drive through a lot of poverty that way, and I imagine a lot of lives I am glad are not mine, and I grieve for those living them. I have a personal Wailing Wall replica in my office to remind me of all of the anguish and agony in the world, and right down the street. Jesus and the Buddha lived with grief and suffering and bore the pain. So do we all. Letting it be with sadness and sorrow and deep regret, knowing it was there long before I arrived and will be here long after I am gone, and lightening human despair is beyond all of us in every generation, and the Wailing Wall is a reminder of that, and of what we are reduced to: Wailing and witnessing the sorrow that is pervasive across all of the ages of humankind that should not be but was and is, and will be for as long as life shall last. This too, this too. Anyway, nevertheless, even so. We all bear the pain and let it be because it is.

I have chosen to forego scenes like this one for the rest of my life. To take these images I have to be where the images are. In two months I will step into my 83rd year and the zeal for the journey, any journey, is long past. So I look through the old images and raise a cup of coffee to their glory, thankful to have had the experience and relieved that I don’t do that any more. It is called making a welcome accommodation to the truth of how things are. And I can smile at that, and look out the window.

People are God the way waves are the ocean. How are we to go about being God? How are we to make the fact that we are God apparent and real in our life? How do we bring God forth in our life? We take this as our foundational problem into every day, and do that what needs to be done to make God real in our life.

I am perennially amazed to be here, now. How did that happen? How did I get from there, then to here, now? What were the chances of that happening? The same thing applies to you and your life. What are the chances that you would be reading this here, now? The odds were definitely against us being together in this way. We all are living miracles. Are we all predestined or accidental? I am going with blind luck. We all had to be somewhere. Why not here, now? It would be here, now, wherever we happened to be, and wherever we would be would be just as miraculous as being here, now. So, it is our perspective, perception, projection that sees the miraculous in the hum-drum everyday. Take our interpretation of the situation out of the picture and it is all suddenly just the way it is with nothing special about it. So. Special or Not Special? It is all in how we look at what we see. And that, too, is a miracle! Or not! How are things really? Who is to say?

After a certain age we get it figured out. We know what matters and what to do about it, and what doesn’t matter and leave it alone. Some of us are angry about everything all of the time, and I laugh at pretty much everything and let it be. We can’t do anything about much of anything so why take it seriously? Love what’s to be loved, enjoy what’s to be enjoyed, and let nature take its course, which it will, of course, no matter what, and that’s how things ought to be, with things allowing things to take their course. Be well! And be just fine with all that is not well! Be just fine with how things are regardless of how that is. That is the secret to having it made. It is perspective all the way to the end of the way, which gets closer all the time, and being fine with that is really having it made.