Nature is doing its thing. We are doing our thing. Circumstances are begetting circumstances, as the old Taoists observed 5,000 years BCE, and no one is in charge. There is no plan. No purpose. There is only the experience of life, living, being alive. We get to choose the shape our experience takes, but no one is keeping score. No one is grading anyone’s performance. We all are free to do what we will with the time that is ours on the earth. Every living thing is free to do its thing, bound only by its own ideas of what is called for, when, where and how, and what is not called for. And we make it all up. We are like children in a sand box. All our lives long. What we are doing here is what we decide we are doing here. Our life is ours to live as we determine how our life is to be lived. Let’s give it our best effort! And we decide what that is. It is the freedom of being alive, to make our own choices about what that needs to be. These photographs and these words are how I choose to live my life. And, actually, they chose me! And I think it would be cool if we all felt that way about the life we are living–that it chose us, and we are glad to comply.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 