It starts slowly as I walk from the meditation hall to lunch. When I sit down to eat, the food appears as a mixture of everything that was required to bring it to the table. I imagine all the land, dirt, sun, and water needed to grow a leaf or a single grain of rice. I imagine all the cells inside a potato that have been cared for as they’ve grown and were pulled from the soil. I see dirt in the wrinkles of hands that dig and plant and harvest. I see the death and decay of the plants that came before them, relinquishing one existence for another before being plucked up as something new. People drive machines and fix water systems. They crate, bag, and box the food and place it on trucks and ships and planes, which are created by other people with big, brilliant brains. I see minerals dredged from the earth to make steel and aluminum and iron and watch people melt it down and pour it into forms that make the machines that move it all across the world. I marvel that the chair I sit in is made of materials that required thousands of minds to perfect before becoming an instrument of my comfort. The rivets on the table, fastening the legs to the plank. The material of the tiles and the hands that laid them on the floor. The trees that become the skeleton of the building. The corrugated roof that keeps the rain and sun off the tables. The bowl that holds the food and the spoon and the water in the glass.
Eventually it all leads back to a parade of every picture I’ve ever made flashing behind my eyes as everything I can see becomes worthy of gratitude. It’s a feeling I’ve forgotten. And as nuts as it sounds, I can see one big, infinite cycle coming together as a single bite of food. For the second time in my life, the word complete is incomplete.
As it begins to overwhelm me I feel a bit batshit-crazy. But what’s crazy isn’t the recognition that so much is worthy of gratitude. What’s crazy is that I haven’t noticed it before as I replay my life in fast-forward, thinking of everything that moved me, fed me, and shaped me and I see how fortunate I have been. Being here at all is a display of my good fortune. I’ve been lucky not only to see the world but to continue to expand myself by changing my lens. A guy goes into a short, spiritual exile halfway around the world and wakes up: It’s a humorous trope and I’m not blind to it. But it’s not just the privilege of who I am and what I’ve been able to do. Likewise, the revelation is accessible to anyone at any time, and how they come to it isn’t really the point. It’s the privilege of living at all, and this is a privilege we all share despite how hard life can be at times. The duality of our sorrows and joys is the buy-in. That I have a body that lives and breathes and moves is a gift. I have a body and mind that gets to be depressed, that gets to navigate ceaseless thought.
— Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within (Random House, July 9, 2024)
Notes:
- Book Reviews:
- NPR (July 10 2024): “This photographer nearly died mountain climbing. His memoir details the mental toll“
- Outside (July 7, 2024): “Cory Richards Was Too Depressed to Get Off the Couch. Then, He Summited Everest Without Oxygen.”
- Portrait by Clayton Boyd
