A toast to the non-epic life

There was nothing epic about these days, and that’s just the point.

My husband and I are both creatives. If you don’t already know, he works in the art direction space and of course ya’ll know my work. The other night we were riffing about a client brief he got. The client needs a video campaign and their goal is to feature an epic story in this campaign, a story so far above real life it would be the envy of anyone watching the campaign. The goal is to sell products and they need to make people desire this thing above all else.

As we chatted about this campaign we got more and more frustrated with this current culture we live in which is consumed with never being satisfied with our own lives. We are forced to feel that our family “staycations” aren’t amazing enough because someone we know just took their kids to Italy. Or our dated home isn’t worthy to host in because our friends just renovated a perfectly fine kitchen to“suit their style.” What about our family camping trip? What’s so great about that since your colleague just took their kids to Great Wolf Lodge?

We think like this all the time, these intrusive thoughts running through our heads. It’s truly exhausting.

Life isn’t epic. We all live ordinary lives. If we constantly seek the epic, waiting for the incredible things, we’re going to live such unsatisfying lives. Why would we do this to ourselves?

Friends of ours just bought a new home which is essentially their dream home, and she was mortified when she caught herself apologizing for the less than perfect spaces, pointing out all the things she is going to rip out and improve. "What am I doing?" she asked me.

We're all guilty of this because we’re conditioned by this world and if we’re being honest with ourselves we judge other people and we know people are judging us. We are molded to be unsatisfied, always wanting more and better. This striving has reached an ultimate breaking point and it takes an incredible amount of willpower to guard your own contentment.

Little did my friend and I know that our husbands were having a really similar conversation, albeit in a more husband kind of way. They were playing with the kids in the pool and our friend let out a sigh and said “Man I dreamed of this. I literally dreamed about having belly flop competitions in my own pool.” 

Guess what? He wasn’t dreaming about the epic. He wasn’t dreaming about bucket lists. Because deep down all we really want is ordinary life with meaningful moments.

That is truly the heart of what I build with documentary family shoots. The goal is to show the beauty of your own life right now surrounded by the people you hold dear doing the things that fill your own heart with joy.

The images dotted throughout this post are not images of epic life events. They’re simply ones that I shot while we visited family in the Dominican last April. They are from everyday life. Kids with fistfuls of corn kernels surrounded by pigeons. Children loving pets, sharing routines with their grandparents, watering Abuelo’s mango trees. A lazy day watercolouring in a central park. Or making the best of a stormy electrical outage by  painting with candlelight and letting the rain work into the process of making art.

There was nothing epic about these days, and that’s just the point.

Some people would even sit in these moments and think they’re not worthy to photograph, and maybe that’s even how you feel. But I challenge you to value this. This is important. This is the most worthy thing to capture because it’s real life.