Fall Creek Falls,
Tennessee, 10/09
Treat people and
live amongst them in such a way so that when you die they will cry over you, and
while you are alive they long for your company.
Traditional Muslim
saying
We grow neither
better nor worse as we grow old, but more like ourselves.
May Lamberton
Becker
For NEW
subscribers click here to receive the Dose: http://www.bobshermanphotography.com/daily_dose
As many of you know every day I send out a photograph of mine along with two quotes. I call it the "Daily Dose". Above is a dose from ten days ago. I first started sending out the dose in 1997. At that time it was one or two quotes from spiritual traditions around the world. My intent was to show my readers the similarities of these traditions and also to help them find their own spiritual path. I started including one of my photos after 9/11. We were about to blow up Afghanistan I wanted to put a face on the Afghan people. I had been fortunate to have traveled through Afghanistan in 1974 and 1975 and I was one of my favorite places on the planet.
Today the dose is read every day by thousands of people all over the world and I'm the guy who not only composes and sends out the dose but I'm also the one who manually adds and removes people from my distribution list. On most days this usually means adding a few people. During an average week one or two people might ask to be removed. I'm always curious about when and why someone would ask to be removed. On the day of this dose five people asked to be removed. So I asked myself what's so special about this dose? The picture may not be my greatest but it's not particularly offensive. The quotes on the surface seem benign. And then it hit me. The attribution for the first quote was that it was a Muslim saying!
The continued intention of the Dose is to share the beauty of the world in images and words. It is my hope that with sufficient contact we will become far more aware of our similarities than our differences. Isn't it sad that at this point in our country (none of the people who dropped out were foreigners) we are so polarized that just the word Muslim would prompt some to stop receiving any information that might allow them to expand their field of view.
As many of you know every day I send out a photograph of mine along with two quotes. I call it the "Daily Dose". Above is a dose from ten days ago. I first started sending out the dose in 1997. At that time it was one or two quotes from spiritual traditions around the world. My intent was to show my readers the similarities of these traditions and also to help them find their own spiritual path. I started including one of my photos after 9/11. We were about to blow up Afghanistan I wanted to put a face on the Afghan people. I had been fortunate to have traveled through Afghanistan in 1974 and 1975 and I was one of my favorite places on the planet.
Today the dose is read every day by thousands of people all over the world and I'm the guy who not only composes and sends out the dose but I'm also the one who manually adds and removes people from my distribution list. On most days this usually means adding a few people. During an average week one or two people might ask to be removed. I'm always curious about when and why someone would ask to be removed. On the day of this dose five people asked to be removed. So I asked myself what's so special about this dose? The picture may not be my greatest but it's not particularly offensive. The quotes on the surface seem benign. And then it hit me. The attribution for the first quote was that it was a Muslim saying!
The continued intention of the Dose is to share the beauty of the world in images and words. It is my hope that with sufficient contact we will become far more aware of our similarities than our differences. Isn't it sad that at this point in our country (none of the people who dropped out were foreigners) we are so polarized that just the word Muslim would prompt some to stop receiving any information that might allow them to expand their field of view.
Posts
Wise words, Bob. And I still make a point of reading the Dose every day. Keep 'em coming!
ReplyDeleteThank you Leon.
ReplyDeleteBob, that is sad. The narrow world view of some people can be very disappointing. It's times like this that we glimpse how clueless others can be. We are all in this together, yet some separate themselves because they see everything in the colors of "us" vs. "them."
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more. The purpose of "The Dose" is to allow us to see ourselves in others.
ReplyDeleteBob