"Happiness [is] Only Real When Shared": Do Yourself a Service

When hard work pays off, it truly feels incredible. We deal with so much pressure and stress in this world already, so when you put all of your effort toward a goal, it is incredibly important that it is successful. The weight of a deadline or anxiety of making good impressions are all logical reasons to perhaps not try to take risks or set difficult goals.

Within two weeks time I will be have completed two fairly monumental things in my life. Everyone has had events that impact their life significantly and during those “ah ha” moments you reach clarity. I remember back in 2008 I volunteered to do Hurricane Katrina clean up with Spring Break Outreach in New Orleans. Before my group left, we had an orientation that featured my good friend, John, as a speaker. He gave a speech about what it meant to volunteer your time to a good cause. He said that doing service is a time in which you see the face of God and He is ever-loving, therefore your heart is filled with love, compassion, and joy by doing said service. I was affected by John’s speech (and musical selection to play Ben Harper’s “Blessed to Be a Witness” song) and its groundwork has stuck with me for a very long time, especially because he was right, volunteering did show me love.

"Life, Love and Pursuit Of..." gallery premiering Oct. 3rd

"As free human beings we can use our unique intelligence to try to understand ourselves and our world. But if we are prevented from using our creative potential, we are deprived of one of the basic characteristics of a human being."  ~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama

My largest and most exciting photography gallery Life, Love and Pursuit Of: Daily Interactions with the World will be premiering on Monday October 3rd, at Brewer's Art. The gallery graciously has asked for me to fill their entire back dining room with over 20 large photos from my collection and will have the gallery up until January. Brewer's Art will be providing free appetizers and happy hour drink prices all night for the event and will also include a free print of one of the images from the gallery, given randomly to anyone who attends the event. So you get to come look at some great images and hear the stories behind them, eat some delicious food for free, drink Baltimore's best beers for cheap, and potentially win a free piece of art. That doesn't sound too terrible, right?

I have put in more time, money, countless hours of lost sleep, energy, and extreme amounts of patience to make this gallery. It is one that I am incredibly proud of and cannot wait to show everyone. My motivation and inspiration behind this exhibit was one that I found while traveling throughout Asia and Africa over the past three years. I realized that I wanted to capture daily life, whether it be doing a job shift, at home with family, traveling around the country, or celebrating your passions. Every person lives their lives in an unique and interesting way, and I only hoped to have captured some of those idiosyncrasies to show that although living on completely different ends of the planet, everyone has love, everyone has emotions, everyone has the pursuit of something important to them; ie- money, peace, happiness, etc. But overall, it's life. We are all living life and this gallery is to celebrate that.

One of the best parts about finalizing this exhibit and waiting for the materials to arrive is that today (September 20th) is World Peace Day. This gallery hopes to give, show, spread peace to people that see the images and are somehow affected by them. Remember that peace is not just a liberal-minded belief or unreachable attainment. Peace can be found within yourself and within the world, I only hope that this gallery may guide you towards that peaceful direction.

"Because we all share this planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. This is not just a dream, but a necessity." ~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Be sure to head to my website michaeltirone.com and take a look at just a few images that will be displayed at the Life, Love, and Pursuit Of... gallery (I obviously can't show you them all!) Also remember to sign the virtual guestbook on the website AND the actual guestbook once you get to Brewer's Art on Monday, October 3rd!