Perspective: Chase Your Dream vs. Do What Makes You Happy

This is the second installment that we start writing this year to document the highlight of the month. Here is the first one if you missed it. We are hoping to see 12 perspective series at the end of the year and look back on the topic or issue that was heavily discussed in each particular month.

Friends and strangers often asked us if photography is hard. And most of them would continue saying: “You are having so much fun doing it. Must not be that hard.” We usually laughed first before giving them the answer. Truth is: it really depends on how much you want it. Photography is fun. What is not fun from getting to document people’s lives? Or better yet, your family and people who matter in your lives. Then, the hard part comes in honing your art and skills. And it becomes harder when you fall in love with it and want to do it for a living. Let’s be honest that the world we are living now keeps hammering the idea of only working on things you’re passionate about. And work really hard on it. The idea is fine and noble sometime. I totally agree that life is short and we better get the most out of it. Why settle for less? But we also found that chasing our dream is not as easy as it sounds and when reality hits you head on, you might want to run as fast as you can. What can be so hard, one might ask. For us, it’s hard when we were not booking weddings/sessions and the bills still needed to be paid. I can’t lie that there were times that I thought about working parttime somewhere else to make ends meet and not making a hole on my saving account. I am not saying that having a parttime job is wrong. However, on those days Kevin pushed me the hardest to sow. To work full time in sowing. To really sow on the relationships I have with God, our friends and the vendors we met. And sow new seeds in the connections we haven’t even made yet. Those days are the hardest for me because sometimes I made bigger hole on my account to make these happened and not hearing back from them for months (or ever). But having a good faith that what we sow we’ll harvest, keeps me going.

Almost daily, I ask myself if I am still willing to give up ___ (fill in the blank of what you need to give up to pursue your dream) and be honest with my answer to myself. I once sat down with an artist who said she could not sow and hope to harvest in the future. The whole thing does not make sense and paralyzed her from fear. She asked me, “How can you hope on something that is unseen?” Fair question. I asked her if there was a pressure from her husband or family to make ends meet and she answered no. Her husband and family were pushing her to chase this dream of her but she could not handle the negative thoughts from not hearing any word from her prospectives and the thought of her art was failing. But she added that she was happy to settle with a full time job that for sure paid her twice a month and helped to pay her bills. I asked her if that made her happy. She paused for a long time and we let the silence took over the moment. In the end she said: yes, it made her happy. It put away her worries on how to provide food on the table. Although she was not a big fan of her day job, it worked for her. She was happy. I then told her that there were parts of chasing this dream of ours too that stinks. Like her day job. One of those is the government paper works. Every job has that. It’s not all celebration, glamour and adventure for us. There were even days that we were not proud of ourselves. We are humans too and we are not perfect. It’s life and noone says that it is supposed to be easy. We all have to fight for what we believe in. And we need to find a balance in doing what we are most passionate about and the reality of ___ (you can fill in the blank). I started writing this post in the hope of inspiring people to pursue what matter most in their lives. Not just their dreams. You need to choose what works for you and your loved ones in the end. Leave us a comment or send us an email if you read this and it changes your perspective.

Ending a post with an image from the latest of our lives is my favourite. Here is not just one but a clip of many from last Saturday when Ps. Ben Houston came to visit and gave a great workshop at our church. I intentionally created this video to show the work of people behind the scene to make this event happened. These people have tirelessly worked on Sundays (as well as weekday nights and Saturdays) to make so many things happened in our church and community. Kevin and I are so honored to serve along these people in Toronto and it was such a priviledge to document this. It is indeed powerful to look over these images again and be reminded that we are all a part of this. And one day when we forget what it feels like to give our all, we are again reminded that we have done it before and how fulfilling life with a purpose is. You might notice that there are more images of setting up than the tearing down. They did set up for a good 2 hours and tore down/cleaned up in 35 minutes. What a great team work!

Share the love,

Jenn

PS: if you are looking for photographer resources, come visit this link as we are learning to build more materials in the months to come. We are hoping to start on FAQ pages and streamline the questions that we often got from fellow and aspired photographers. It’s very rewarding to share and build this industry together!

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