Why it's important to keep searching for what you want

Today I spent quite a lot of time browsing the Getty image library in search for a number of particular images. I had them in low res and no reference number, so it was pretty much a case of looking for the needle in the hay stack.

Source: jtsullivan.com

And so I started. I had a picture of a baby. I searched for baby and I got back about 254 pages of results. Hmm, I had to narrow it down. So half heartedly I started searching for baby against grey background.  I got less results and a few pages scanned later I found my baby! And then I felt like this!

Source: excelle.monster.com

But I had more pictures to find and more difficult briefs. Some searches came back with no results. Other came back with too many. I felt like the whole exercise was completely pointless especially as I had google searched it before and couldn't find the source in high res. But I kept doing it, I knew resistance was futile and those pictures had to have come from somewhere. Many search results pages later, I stumbled upon other two of my images. I felt positive. Maybe this wasn't such a pointless exercise after all.

I started looking for more specific key words, such as 'smiling large Hispanic family on balcony'. That came back with nothing. But I didn't give up, I searched and searched and searched and every time I found another image, I felt elated.

And then it dawned on me: what if it's the same in life, what if what we're looking for may not be on the first page of the catalogue and instead of going through the whole catalogue we stop searching after a few pages? What if we're so close to getting what we want but we don't even know it? What if we just need to reframe the problem, define the search terminology better? Our image may be one of a 'young Caucasian father and child at desk' but what if the particular 'young Caucasian father with child at desk' I'm looking for is also 'with turned back'?

Bingo! First result. It was there, the last image I was looking for...


I figured out life is simple: what you want is what you get. That's why is important to keep searching.

Source: greatnesshq.com