For the first action project of my Journalism class, we were asked to essentially define the meaning of life in 1000 words. We also had to get some help with answering this question. I chose to interview my cousin, Darius. I chose Darius because he is one of the most insightful people I know, and we just so happen to be very close. We were also asked to take a picture of our subject, which is more connected to the course itself if you think about photo-journalism. There's different types of journalism though; photo-journalism and newspaper editors are just two examples of journalism. I had just a little bit of difficulty writing the 1000 words because this assignment is very open-ended, and I didn't have many guidelines to go by. Conceptually, this project is one of the greatest I've ever had and I had a great time digging deep down into my brain.
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What would you do if you were asked to define life? For some, this question may be quite straightforward, but for others, this question may be very difficult to tackle; I am one of those people. My views on things of this nature are normally anything but straightforward because I'm such an open-minded individual. Nevertheless I am still stubborn so majority of the time when I believe something, I'm not looking back. This project, and my cousin was an eye-opening experience. Questions like, "what's the meaning of life," are what actually gets my brain working, and makes me feel like I have to dig deep to answer them. "What's the meaning of life," is probably one of the most open-ended questions ever; I could say that this question is the most open-ended question ever.
My subject's name is Darius, and he is quite the character. My cousin's views are always different and insightful. As soon as the question for this project arose, I knew exactly who I wanted to interview because my cousin loves to preach to me about his mistakes, and how I can avoid making the same ones. As I have gotten older, he has proven as a really big role model for these stages in my life. Darius' opinions are very abstract, in a sense where you really understand him after you have thought for awhile. Although, most times Darius can be very straightforward, his mind is anything but that.
Since you have pretty much met my interviewee, I would like to show you all what happened when I presented him a couple questions, surrounding what the meaning of life is. When my subject was asked, "what's the meaning of life, in your opinion," Darius responded, "No meaning to it until you put one on it, can’t generalize the meaning of life because it’s different from person to person just live it." Just from his first answer, I knew this would be a great interview. The answer he gave was very expected, and I loved it because it really was a good intro into the interview. My second question was for him was, "has life always meant the same for you, or did this meaning change to you and why," and Darius said, "I always knew life is what you make it, just in the process of learning the full extent of it." Then there was that answer I was awaiting the whole time; when I asked him for a story that explains his view of the meaning of life, he then responded with, "Umm.. I was born in 1993, it’s 2016. 1+1 always equals 2." I wanted to ask him to elaborate on this statement so bad, but I believe it's better off not explained, and thought about. The meat of the interview began to saute when I asked the question, "what image would represent this meaning of life - would it be you yourself, something of yours with sentimental value, a favorite book, etc, and would you please describe it?" My subject then responded with,"the seasons. Life is like the seasons. As far as growth and its representation, you can’t be specific because it means different things from person to person. Just like a stop light or 100 cent means different things to different people, depends on how deep you want to look into it. But when you reflect on what those things mean, it’s a representation of ourselves as well. First thing that comes to mind when I answered seasons is change, process, and progress which is what I’m going through. Any analogy can apply to anyone at any point in time, just a matter of what part we are going through. We can be as deep as in what specific season and its meaning or just as general as the season itself and let you imply what you wish. Life is everything and nothing at the same time, depends on how deep you want to look at something or how shallow you wish to be." I want to stop here for a moment because there's a lot of stuff going on here, in this answer. My subject says that life is like the seasons, and he continues to explain the importance of point-of-view. He flexes change, process, and progress as his main support for answering "the seasons."
Fortunate enough, I have more questions; they are not going to be the same as the last ones. The following questions are going to get a lot more personal. I started this series of questions with what I would say, is the most important question of them all, "how important is money to you." as Darius answered very straightforwardly, "money is essentially one of the most important things in life. In order to do things or not, it usually comes down to finance. Most of life’s decisions come down to money and the ability to acquire it or spend it." I then tried to dig deeper; I asked him if there would ever be one thing in the past he would have did differently and he said that he wish he never would have realized being untrue to himself because it's one of those bad habits that are hard to shake now, as he gets older. I asked my subject two more questions; one of those questions was, "would you risk your life for your family's," and he responded with "indeed." My last question was quite the outro; I asked him "would you rather have a better life now or a better life later," and he responded with, "later, because life would be worse later otherwise."
Above, is a photo of my cousin Darius where I just asked him to turn around and snapped a photo of him. I wanted to capture the emotion and full persona of him. I interviewed him in the living room and took this photo in the dining room where there was a bit better lighting. I tried to focus on him in the photo and blur out the background, but it was hard because my photo was sudden and not prepared. You can see the emotion of Darius, a bit of a faint smirk with a very serious face, capturing who he is as a person. The photo came out not as perfect as I would have thought, but I'm still proud of what I depicted in the photo.
