Hollow Shells of Black-and-White

Originally published on January 20th, 2025

I love black-and-white photos. Smiling faces, teeming with life, bursting with enthusiasm, all……now dead. No matter their peaks and plummets through life, each person is permanently gone. Consciousness doused, forever. I can’t help but stare, and ask the answerless questions:

Did you live well? Long, full years with swashbuckling chapters? Or a string of dull, empty days?

But this morning, I had a realization. History is a shell. Those black-and-white photos? Hollow. Shells can be beautiful. Picture a Christmas egg ornament – drained with a pinprick, intricate patterns painted on with care. Beautiful and –– empty. A dazzling shell, no yolk. Yolk is potential. Think of an egg yolk: a yellowy swirl that could one day grow legs and walk planet earth wherever its poultry heart pleases. Just add time.

Back to the photos: the moments themselves weren't empty. They dripped with potential, no limits. Each person had the power to tangle with fate every second of their lives. Did they realize the power coursing through their black-and-white bodies? We can't know. But as the camera shutter went *click*, each was pure potential. No limits.

Years have passed, death’s pinprick came for all, and now here I am, staring at this intricate black-and-white pattern. But I must remember, it’s only a shell. The yolk of potential has drained away, passed from them to me. Do I know my power? Will I use this power to tangle with fate? Will I fill my seconds in ways that honors this gift?

Flow. Aliveness. Resonance. Attunement. May I fill my years with these. And two centuries from now, when someone wonders if I lived well, a resounding shout will cry out from iPhone camera eyes:

YES! YES! YES!