HHC Blog

At Amy’s (The World is a Book) recent post Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Catching People Unaware, she asked if I would re-post the story I wrote about taking photos of a lady at a Chinese grocery store. I didn’t know how to re-post and was going to get instruction from her, but I forgot to do it. Amy was kind to remind me and tell me what I need to do, so here is the story again. Hope you’ll like it. (Thanks, Amy.)

A Happy Day — Originally Posted on September 13, 2014

She works at a Chinese grocery store in the city. Every time we walked into the store, she welcomed us with a big sweet smile. During the 12 days that MN State Fair was on, the owner of the store decided to make some money by letting people park their cars at the store’s parking space for a fee. She was in charge of directing the traffic and collecting money. It was a hot day when we got there. She wore a hat, her hand holding a big cup of cold drink. She was cheerful. I asked her if I could take a picture of her. She said yes.

A Sweet Lady

Today, we went to the store to buy some Chinese vegetables. She said hi, but she wasn’t as cheerful as before. I passed an envelope, which contained her pictures, to her.

“For me?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

She opened the envelope and saw her two pictures. She held both pictures in front of her, started giggling. She couldn’t take her eyes off those pictures; she kept giggling.
“I look pretty good,” she said, laughing.

While we were selecting vegetables, I turned and peeked at her. She was still looking at her pictures, still giggling. A minute or two later, she placed her pictures back to the envelope, and almost immediately, she took them out again. She stared at those photos, laughing.

When we finally reached the cashier table to pay for the grocery, she smiled at me, thanked me again and again. While we were leaving the store, she shouted behind us, “Thank you!”

I turned; she blew me a kiss.

I was dancing in the clouds the whole day.

That must be why I like taking pictures.

I didn’t tell you that I had taken many disappointing photos on my Arizona trip. The composition, the color… they all good to my standard, but the noise were unbearable. Looking at those photos, my first thought was to get a different camera 😉 “This camera and I just don’t get along,” I said to my husband. But my second thought was that even if I’m going to buy a new camera, I still want to fix the problem between this camera and me. It’s war.

I calmed down (from my disappointment) two days later and decided to take a “soft” approach; I figured that my camera and I might need some bonding time. In an effort of getting to know the camera better, I started taking photos in manual mode (first time in my life). Had some surprises, but I began understanding my camera side of story.

Yesterday was a great day. It was a little windy, but 60+ degree! I couldn’t wait to take my camera out for a walk in the park. On our way to the Root River Park, I looked at the gray sky, brown trees, and wondered if any photo would turn out good.

The conclusion? We had a great time; it was a good exercise (both physical and mental); the photos turned out good (I mean much less noise!); and most importantly, I don’t think I will get a new camera soon. 😉

I would like to use this following photo, a piece of ice hanging over the rock, for Cee’s Odd photo challenge 😉

Iowa, Color the Wind Festival

While I was still pondering on passion, Otto posted another thought-provoking article Finding Purpose. By the way, if you are interested in these subjects like I do, I highly recommend you go read Otto’s articles… on second thought, even if you are not interested in these subject, you may still want to go take a look. I’ve printed them out and plan to read again and again.

Before I continue, I want to thank everyone who has commented on part one of this article. Life is more complicated than my little brain could comprehend. Before I started writing this, I thought I had everything figured out. Your comments brought me some new knowledge, and, believe it or not, I have made some necessary changes (for better) because of that. THANK YOU!

There was something about me that not many people knew: finding purpose (of life) was important for me since I was very young. I remember telling one of my junior high school classmates that I knew there was a purpose of my life, but I had no idea what it was. She rolled her eyes. That was when I realized that not everyone had thought about his purpose of life (particularly at that age). Several years later, I asked my high school teacher what the purpose of life was. As a shy Chinese girl who, most of the time, kept a distance from her teachers, asking my teacher such a philosophical question showed how desperately I was at the time. Many years later when I was a computer programmer, one day, I asked my officemate what purpose of life was and he almost fell off his chair.

Otto’s two articles gave me a lot to think about. It finally dawn on me that passion alone couldn’t sustain (Using Perpetua’s words: passion is a fleeting thing. Thanks, Perpetua. 😉 I wasn’t as happy as I thought I would be when a reader told me she liked my book because publishing a book was a goal and the moment I reached that goal, I was done with it and ready to move on. Even though all the profit from selling the book was donated to the food bank (this could be used as a purpose for writing the book), the idea of donating money was an afterthought. It was my passion (in writing) helped me to set and reach that goal and when the goal was reached, my passion seemed considering its job was done and inched to the background.

But, does it still exist?

Otto (and his friend) recently has several posts on his Ethiopia trip, which you can find it at Untold Stories. Those stories had made some impact on me that I don’t know how to describe. I’m grateful for what they had done, but, at the same time, I knew I wasn’t brave enough to do things like that. I was also very touched by Randall’s story The Endurance of Tacloban: Heart of the Philippines. I could feel Randall’s caring and warmness toward those people. In my own photographing experience, my happiest moment was the time I took photos of the lady at a Chinese grocery store and later gave the photos to her. I can still hear her giggling and I remember how happy I was because my photos had made her day.

Suddenly I realized that all these stories were powerful for me because they turned people’s suffering into hope with human (our) compassion.

Maybe… passion is a word that carries too much weight for me. It’s easier to think things I like to do.

My aha-moment came when I’ve reached to a conclusion that it’s not that I don’t like writing or photographing anymore; it is that now I want to do it with a purpose. The result that I am hungry for can only come from reaching out to people and do things benefit them. As an introvert, I know this is not going to be easy.

I feel better now 😉