Chapter Twenty-Three. Unstuck and Free

In the vast ocean of time, the older we get the more prominent the clock becomes. In our youth, time was simple and slow. Time was unlimited and free. Then as we grew up, it became more of a blur as days, weeks, months, and years become less defined. Time compresses the more we age. Consider the 6-year-old who can’t fathom life past the age of 8, versus the 40-year-old who can easily imagine life at 30, 20, and 10.

Looking forward, time looks like a string of yarn stretched out before our path. Time extends to the horizon and we approach it one step at a time. Looking backward, time is like a pile of yarn—sometimes stretched out and other times clumped up into a ball. When gathered up, it’s always surprising to see how so much time can fit into the palm of your hand. Time isn’t as linear as we like to think.

While we haven’t literally been transported up Haslar Creek, we all know what it’s like to be stuck. When we’re stuck, time seems to slow and drag. A minute can feel like an hour, and a month can feel like a year. That’s how I felt in my mid-twenties when life hadn’t turned out as I had planned. Instead of health and happiness, I was overwhelmed by constant and chronic pain from a car accident years before. Regardless of how I tried, I couldn’t see a way out. I was stuck and was coming undone. Time seemed to crawl.

After a number of years, my situation turned for the worse. I saw some of the best physicians around, at institutions like Stanford, UCLA, UCSF, and the Mayo Clinic, but nothing seemed to help. In the big picture of things, my situation wasn’t that bad, but when you’re stuck it always seems worse than it is. It was a dark night for my soul. I was frustrated, angry, and depressed. On the good days, I had hope, yet the pain kept dragging me down. Chronic pain is a cycle that is hard to beat. Anyone who has been through this (or is going through this now) knows what I mean.

Soon I discovered that the camera is a magical device. When I held it up to my eye the world became quiet and it blocked out my pain. I looked through the lens and the darkness turned to light. No longer focusing on myself, I saw the world with fresh eyes. What was once dismal became divine. The camera changed the way I experienced the world and shifted how I understood time.

Rather than feeling burdened by time, the camera helped me appreciate it one small slice at a time. I discovered within these slices new worlds and hidden truths that previously went unseen. One of my first findings came as I was walking down a busy urban street. Loud traffic rushed by, and hazy smog filled the air. Let’s just say it wasn’t the most picturesque scene. But when I looked down I saw one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

With experiences like this, the camera quickly became a close mentor and friend. It gave the ability to “savor life intensely at 1/100th of a second,” as the photographer Marc Riboud said. The camera became a passport to explore new land. It taught me how to slow down and how to be grateful for the small moments in life. It helped me discover secrets hidden beneath the surface of things. Yet still I found myself getting stuck. So I would turn to my camera and use it like a crowbar to pry my way out. Eventually, my camera turned into a paddle and canoe that helped me navigate downstream. No longer “up a creek,” I was free.

Next, it takes patience to get unstuck. Yet patience doesn’t mean you have to sit still. Like trying to fly a kite on a windless day, it helps to run. Movement builds momentum, gets the creative fibers to stretch, and oxygenates the mind. Clarity comes quickly to those who don’t sit around.

Before my dad gave me a camera, my perspective was skewed. Life seemed worse than it really was. I couldn’t see past my own condition—the pain constantly calling attention to itself. Without knowing it, I became self-absorbed. When I was given the gift of a camera, it was like a lens cap fell off my eyes and I was finally able to see. Even more liberating, I was suddenly able to focus on something other than myself.

This shift in focus set me free. No longer limited by a dull vision of the world, I began to pay attention to other things. And the more you pay attention, the more beautiful something becomes. I lost myself to the beauty of the world and had never felt more alive.

I was in the zone, or what the author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.” Flow is that experience of being fully immersed and energized by a task. In the flow state we forget ourselves. And herein lies one of the most powerful antidotes to being stuck: self-forgetfulness. Whether achieved by doing an activity or by extending kindness to someone else, when we think of ourselves less, our lives expand. It’s one of the great paradoxes of the creative life—a less self-centered view of the world will set you free to become more of who it is that you were designed to be.