The Snapshots In-between

Have you ever found yourself on a journey and all you’re focused on is the destination? Take skiing for example, you’re off to Switzerland! Woohoohoo! The destination is going to be phenomenal. Snow! Mountains! Pastries! Cheese! The list goes on. Of course you’re excited about the destination – that’s the whole point of the skiing trip - to enjoy skiing and all the other things you’ll find at the destination.

The journey to get there is just a frustrating interlude of packing, checking your list, worrying about what you’re forgetting, getting to the airport on time, getting through security without a strip search, losing all feeling in your butt because the seats on the flight are terrible, hoping you’re awake enough to drive up the mountain without dropping off a cliff and into a pristine lake… See what I mean? The journey to get to the ski holiday sounds like an adventure in being overwhelmed.

I often find myself so focused on the destination (for good reason, see above) that I completely lose sight of being present on the journey. But why would I want to be present for all of the ‘overwhelm’ of getting ready for something like a skiing trip? Because the journey itself is often where life actually happens.

I’m not saying life stops happening once you’ve arrived at the aforementioned destination. Clearly, having arrived in Switzerland to ski, you’re going to have a grand time full of fun and adventure (and maybe a sore butt from falling down but that’s all part of the destination, right?). What I am saying is that living for the destination alone often takes us out of living fully present and leads us into barely living at all.

The first time I realised that it hit me hard. Had I potentially been not living my life? Had I really spent a large part of my time on earth so focused on not dying, not feeling, not being present in the pain of the journey that my existence was made up of a series of ‘destination’ moments and everything in between had been classified as either ‘meaningless’ or ‘the pain my butt felt on the flight?’

The answer to that question was both yes and no. Most of our realities aren’t that black and white. I did discover that I was often desperately trying to avoid what I considered to be the pain of the journey. I think this is normal. We’ve all experienced overwhelming life circumstances (trauma). We’ve all gone through something painful that makes us afraid, makes us want to withdraw, makes us nervous to connect or put ourselves out there, makes us afraid of being creative or expressive. We’ve all experienced journeys that make us want to tap out.

So, what’s important about living fully present on the journey? Think about your entire life from the perspective of a photographer – taking snapshots every few seconds. Each moment in time is a piece of you; a reflection of that moment. Each snapshot can be something different: beautiful, adventurous, joyful, vengeful, painful, anxious, etc. Each snapshot is a reflection of who you are; but it’s only a snapshot. The individual snapshots cannot express or show the whole of who you are without every other piece and snapshot that makes up your life.

What if we take the ‘destination’ snaps shots and focus on those? My ski trip to Switzerland would show: joy, excitement, relaxation, pain (that whole example about falling and hurt butts is very real), connection, food, love, etc. But only focusing on those destination moments misses out on all the snap-shots that helped me to arrive there in the first place.

Back up a step and ask the photographer to hand you more pictures of my life. You might see: Italy, the Dolomites, learning to snowboard, my younger sister, adventure, discovering coffee, language, uncertainty, love, anxiety, growth, etc. But how did I land in Italy?

Back up further. Now we see: love of language, family, dual-citizenship, travel, fear of missing out, big leaps into the unknown, desperation to be loved, fear of losing my sister, hating coffee, etc.

Back up again. Now we see: cancer, an endless search to find myself, belief, lack of belief, a fear of losing my family so deep that it still impacts me today, hope for a future, uncertainty, questions about kids, discovery, the love of my life, etc.

None of the individual snapshots of my life can tell you the whole story about who I am; but all the snap-shots together make up the mosaic of my life – past, present, and future. If I only live in the destination moments, I miss out on all of the snapshots taken in between, and there is a lot of life lived in those in between moments. For a large part of life I took all the ‘in between’ snapshots and threw them away. I didn’t want to see them! I didn’t want to see the pain, the bullying, the sorrow, the fear, the betrayal, the loss. I only wanted to see the destination moments because I’d decided those moments were the ‘good ones.’ If I could just avoid the other snapshots my life would be better, less shattered. But it’s not true.

Every snapshot of my life is a part of me, even if it’s a part that hurts to look at or remember; and yet, looking back, I see how strong I was in the midst of the moments I’d rather forget. Looking at these thrown away snapshots isn’t always easy. Sometimes we need help! It’s ok to ask someone else to pull out the pictures and hold them for you. Sometimes it’s ok to look at the photo, remember, and then burn it – releasing that moment into the night sky on a gentle breeze of floating cinder and ash.

It's important to live fully present, integrating each snap-shot of your life, because every part of your journey, not just the destination, makes up who you are. Every moment reflects another facet of your being but no individual moment itself makes up the whole of you – who are you now, who you were then, who you are becoming. Living fully present enables us to see the whole of what makes us into ourselves; it helps us to embrace every piece of ourselves that has existed, is existing, and will exist.

Journey Prompt: Take a moment to reflect on your own journey.

• What are some of the snapshots of the in-between? How are those moments important?

• What moments are you living now that make up the ‘mundane’?

• What snapshots from the past make up the mosaic of who you are now?

• What in-between snapshots stand out to you?

Breath deep. Live fully present.