Work: The ONLY Frontier

Hi


Can you imagine having a job like this? Click here for amazing photos of the great white in mid attack. From the article: "The wildlife photographer Chris Fellows spends over half of each year waiting off the coast of South Africa to capture the sharks at their grisly work."


Fellows remarked, from the article, "'To see a perfectly streamlined great white slowly cruising in clear water with shafts of light bouncing off its back is like watching a sports car effortlessly cruise past you on the freeway. It is just one of those moments that makes you appreciate a beautiful creation.'" I wonder how close this guy actually was in getting these pictures? And how scary would that be?! I mean, basically, you're looking at Jaws up close and personal in a way Steven Spielberg could have only wished back in the 70's.


Honestly, though, I would love to do something like this as my career. How many people when asked, "What do you do for a living?" can pull up photos like that and say, "This..." It's pretty unreal. If not taking pictures of the great white killing seals, I would love to do most of anything you see on channels like Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and that remarkable Planet Earth series.


Those guys are lucky. You get to go out into the wilderness on real life adventures. You get to witness first hand the raw beauty and power of nature. And with that, I would imagine, you would have to have a tremendous level of appreciation for everything that God has manifested. When watching TV shows or looking at the pictures found in the above link, you can't help but to feel in awe and at the same time powerless. In awe for the sheer magnificence of nature in action. Powerless because you know that nature is constantly running its course with or without regard to your life. And when you look at the bigger picture, you have to begin thinking, What is creating and supporting all of this? And the answer for me will always be Allah. Only Allah can create things that are beyond our imagination.

Let's face it, God's creativity is unparallel. In fact, I contend that Allah is the Ultimate Artist. There were nights during my glory DePaul years in Lincoln Park where I would walk out to LSD (Lake Shore Drive) on the beach and would love nothing more than to stare out at the lake with the moon's reflection. The set-up was serene and perfect. The details flawless. And each girl I took there, loved it. Oops, I mean...

The analogy of the painter really comes from when you're looking at something like the moon over Lake Michigan because you almost feel like you can go out there and touch it. Touch the stars. Touch the moon. How remarkable is that? That's when you feel powerless. That there's "something out there" controlling and managing all of this without regard to you, though you are a part of the Painter's landscape and portfolio.

I know I'm kind of jumping everywhere from my dream job to the beauty and splendor of Allah's creation, but it all goes hand-in-hand with my deeply reflective nature. Of course, if you were to ask my brothers, they would define "reflective" more so as "day dreaming" or "Imran loves to waste time sleeping in sun spots during the middle of a day like Garfield thinking about fictious things like being the next Jacques Cousteau." That's also true, too. But, I digress from my tangents (if that makes any sense)...

So instead of being on the wilderness frontier, I get to live the dream of working in Corporate America. Where the closest thing to watching a shark attack its prey is me listening to an angry client about why their friggen system isn't working and how they plan to engage in a blood bath of shark-attacking fury until their system is put live. Hooray for me.

You should note that my current train of thought comes after the end of an extended Thanksgiving weekend where I'm feeling bitter that come Tuesday morning (I took Monday off to prolong the inevitable pain as much as possible), I have to be a responsible professional adult living in the real world where the moon doesn't look as magnificient as it once did over Lake Michigan in the middle of the night with different girls for different nights.

Okay, on different nights by myself, but I'll take any escape-from-reality moment I can get, dang it.

Cheers