When do people leave the things they love?

I have never been able to let people give up on what they love. Their passions, their art, dreams and pursuits that keep them alive. And yet somehow, I saw what Ginsberg saw before writing ‘howl’. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. They are found everywhere if you look close enough. Could be found in your college best friend who wanted to devote her life to music, or a painter you befriended in the mountains on a solo trip, a stranger you connected to over conversations about a writer’s life and mental health, even in the closest people you had never really known.

During a recent work meeting, I was introduced to a seventy year old photographer who had left photography for 25 years. That’s many more lifetimes than I have spent shooting. He stopped shooting after loosing his life’s worth of work. I remember trying to inspire every person walking and passing by since the very beginning of my journey. A friend in school picked up a camera after seeing me shoot and hasn’t left since. Every class speech during my years in film school used to be about the power of passions and following them. I saw it in people, that ability never left. Although I found myself wishing somedays that I didn’t see this. Seeing is not enough. Seeing it slip by people’s hands is another journey that will get you terribly close to the truth of it all. We are not ready to see that yet, no motivational speech about following your passion will bother going into the terrifying details of that part of the picture. Not about not giving up, but about people who give it up. What leads them to not keep the very thing that keeps them going?

It takes another path to reach that point. Another to understand.