Giving Meaning to Life

This unit in my journalism class we have learned about the importance of telling stories through our journalism, specifically using photographs. Using the power of photography one can capture endless moments and experiences, a picture worth a thousand words, so what happens when we use it to answer questions? More specifically what happens when we use it to answer the century old question, what is the meaning of life? For this action project that is exactly what we were tasked with doing. We were to interview, ask, write ( in about one thousand words), and photograph. Here is my final result:

Giving Meaning to Life

For millennia humans have been trying to answer the seemingly easy question, What is the meaning of life? From the moment we are able to formulate thoughts we come face to face with the size of our existence and are eventually bombarded with questions about the meaning we are tasked to give it. As part of our human nature, we must make sense of things! It's impossible to simply deem something meaningless for the mere acknowledgment of its existence gives it a minimal but noticeable meaning, even if it's just for a second. From religious beliefs, to philosophical ideology, to scientific speculation and theories, humans have been trying to give life sense through a formulated meaning throughout the ages. There have always been questions, Where did we come from? Why were we born? Why here? Why Now? Why me? Why? Is my purpose objective or subjective? Do I even have a purpose? Why so many questions? What is the meaning of life?! Luckily the only natural response to questions is answers, and so “the meaning of life is just to live now”.

In less than a minute into our interview Nati had already answered my question, fully and surely with a smile on her face. Nati is a teenager just like me. We’re both very young and at an age where we’re not kids anymore who have overly naive and innocent views on life but we haven’t fully experienced most of what the world has to offer like adults have, this leaves us in a strange space, where, in a few words we’re ‘trying to figure it all out’ giving us a different perspective on life. Nati is also my girlfriend, my lover, my friend, my romantic partner and whatever other labels exist to describe our relationship. This naturally inclined me to want to ask her such an important question, and have a deeper insight on her formulated meanings to give to this life. The beginning of our interview went just like this:

“Uh first question, you’re not going to guess what it is-”

“What’s the meaning of life?”

“Yes hah , What is the meaning of life in your opinion?”

“In my opinion the meaning of life is just to live now and to kinda just do the best you can to like... be - not like quite to be happy- but to just do the best you can to make the best of what you have. So yeah”.

Deeper into our interview I became interested in obtaining more insight on her meaning of life, which, having grown up in a religious home with Christian values, I soon realized was very different from mine. So I started asking more questions. What exactly did ‘living’ mean to her? Has she always had the same meaning of life? Who were the important people who had helped shape her meaning? and How did she practice and live out her meaning of life? 

To all my questions she had responses. Living to her meant being able to get up in the morning and “being aware and conscious”of oneself. Her meaning of life hadn't always been the same and she told me of a memory of her “walking in the park and just thinking how crazy it is that I’m [she’s] alive and a person... and it made me [her] develop the belief that the meaning of life is to live and just like... be a person, you know, be a human”. Her family played a big role in developing and coming to understand her meaning of life and she mentioned “I think I have to thank my mom for this because she alway teaches me about the brain and she always taught me that your brain controls everything and you know, like if you have the right attitude you can do anything”. She believes being able to be in control of yourself and your mental state plays a big role in coming to an understanding of your own happiness and making the best out of the circumstances life throws at us. When it came to living out her meaning of life, she felt that“being kind [to others] and making sure you care for yourself” were practical ways of living it out, at heart this is what truly living meant to her.

When it was time to take a photograph that captivated her meaning of life, she remembered about moments where she spent her time reflecting on the meaning of life. Times where she would lie on the grass and simply reflect, “when I just lay down in the grass and look up at the sky I’m actually thinking, I'm thinking about my existence, it's usually that, I’m not thinking about anything else”. It was only natural to want to capture a moment like that in order to contain the essence of her meaning in one shot. . The day after the interview, using my phone as my camera, we headed down to Millennium park in downtown Chicago to capture a moment, a fraction of a second, in which her meaning of life could be captured and held in my camera roll.

For the shot it was important I captured her expression as she laid on the grass, it was also important the shot made it obvious she was the center of this photograph, contemplating the existential questions while doing something seemingly ordinary. Not only that but it was important that the photograph gave the same ambience as her answer to my question, a light, happy, hopeful ambience. To do this I made sure the exposure was a bit higher than usual and adjusted my focus as needed. Unfortunately on my phone I was not able to control the aperture but according to the Apple website, the main aperture on an iPhone 12 is f/1.6 (the smaller the aperture the more light is let in). Using the app Halide, I was able to take the picture with a 1/3k shutter speed making sure the photo came out clear without any motion blur making Nati, the subject of my photo, come out as clear as possible. Using the rule of thirds ( a technique in which one splits the composition of the photo into nine grid squares and places the subject on one third of the grid) I placed her in various positions to see which one fit the best. Finally after various attempts I ended up with various shots, each a little different than the last and it was time to choose. As we looked through them standing in the middle of the grass she had just been laying on, she started pointing out the ones she felt really captured the essence of her meaning. Then we came across a particular shot and we both immediately knew there was just something about this shot that really sent a message through the captured smile and contemplative look on her face as she laid on the grass. A message of pure living, enjoyment, and experiencing of a seemingly simple moment in life .

Sun-kissed Thoughts, AAG, 2022

Objectively, in this shot, the subject takes up the lower third of the image, the exposure is high, and the focus is clear but subjectively more is intended to come across to the viewer. Through the illuminating sunlight, the relaxed ambiance, and the enjoyment written on the subject’s face, Nati’s meaning of life becomes a visual representation captured in my camera roll. Despite the chilly weather that day, the moist grass, and the noisy park, she found herself enjoying the sun on her face as she laid contemplating her existence, ultimately living out her meaning of life.