William Oldacre Photography

Tag: happiness

  • Simple Pleasures

    Simple Pleasures

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, fuchsia, pink, muted, waves, streaks, patterns
    Red Smear Over Orange Brown, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    I’ve been struggling today with fatigue and disillusionment. Trying to think about what to write and not too happy with myself in general – in short –  moping.

    But as I’m finishing this image I’m thinking what would it take to lift this cloud – what’s missing exactly. You know I don’t think its any object or service that’s missing from my life. There’s nothing much I couldn’t procure if I really thought it was important. Money is not the issue – not saying I have lots – just that it’s not the solution or the means to a solution.

    I’ve read that lottery winners, after an initial high from their winnings will return to their previous life upsets and issues. Having gobs of money doesn’t make you happy – much to everyone’s dismay.

    Honestly, I think its the simple pleasures of life that bring the most happiness. Waking up to the sun, a good meal, a good sleep, laughing with friends, visiting family, crying, music, learning. These are all fundamentals that give the greatest happiness in our lives. Things that are the essence of ourselves. When we ignore them we feel emptiness.

    Think of your happiest moments – weren’t they something like this?

    I keep saying I need to live in the now but in fact more precisely – I need to live in the simple pleasures of the now.

  • Powerful Emotion

    Powerful Emotion

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, blue, orange, muted, streaks, patterns
    Wisps Across Orangey Blue Strips, 2012 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    At times like now I have an incredibly strong emotion welling up, humming and filling me up that I find difficult to explain. It’s akin to a tremendous sadness, coupled with nostalgia but woven through with happiness and pervaded with tremendous love. There is acceptance, apprehension is absent and there is a sense of omnipresence – of an ability to over view past and present equally. It makes me want to experience everything, forget all grudges and angers and makes my heart want to burst. It’s almost more than I can bear. I believe it might be a calm state.

    It feels like a subterranean under-current pervasive in all aspects and events of life – some fundamental element that is always there but not always observed or noticed. I want to remember it – keep it present in the fore, dwell in it so I can be mindful and aware of the ever potent moments of life. Although this is my wish, my fatigue and angers wash it away – overwhelm and submerge it in a high tide of jumbled emotions.

    Even now as I concentrate on writing this I feel a subtle shift as my awareness of it recedes into the background of my mind. I feel it most when I’m working on images, as I just was before beginning to write this and while quietly listening to music – oddly enough, not so much while I meditate.

    Usually meditation feels like my mind unraveling and meandering or if I’m able, a calm quietness and sometimes a centered mental warmth. But this omnipresent hum sad happiness feeling is different. It feels like the lattice upon which our lives our laid. A horizonless plain in which I’m able to move and see the entire relevance of action or emotion in full and in detail.

    As I said, I want to dwell in it.