When a photo not only captures a past moment but also a past life

Gordie Jackson
2 min readFeb 3, 2018

--

The Rugby team at Junior High 1985

You know the image of the sandcastles being washed away helped me today.

I kept thinking,

“Yesterday is gone what is the point in carrying the worries of yesterday. If the universe creates a new tide each day and that is all that matters so we should only be concerned with the present moment.”

We can only do what we can do and see what happens. Whoever asked the Universe to work faster? We do what we do at the pace that comes. I believe the unhealthy stress comes from others trying to demand more from our mini-universe.

There is something about holding that perspective that freed me today.

I learned yesterday of the death of one of the lads from my school year. I haven’t seen him for maybe 30 years though once I heard the news I was immediately back at Junior High. Kenny always seemed to be smiling and enjoyed a good laugh. It makes you wonder what impression we leave on people.

It is the people around us that make our story. They may not be with us throughout our lives but at a particular time, they were part of our story. I do think those in our school year share a perspective with us on life that is unique. It is like we are going through the stages of growing up together. We see the best and worst of each other.

Communities are made from those who surround us. I was fortunate to grow up in an area where you prided yourself on knowing the family name of every house. You may not have been great friends but you both recognised each other as part of the same community. Your parents knew their parents and your grandparents knew their grandas and grannies.

If I contrast that with the neighbourhood I live in now I could maybe name 6 surnames. Community is not so much where you live as where you work, where you worship, where you drink coffee.

I was fascinated with the film, ‘Back to the Future’ in my youth. I recall one scene where the people in a photograph began to disappear as Marty and the professor interfered with the past. It is beginning to feel like I am crossing the midway point of life where people from the past who made up part of my story are disappearing. As I look at the old school photo it is changing as Kenny has now left the planet. The photo is capturing not only a past moment but a past life.

g

--

--

Gordie Jackson

Speaks with a Northern Irish accent, lives in Hertfordshire, England.