Being on top of things, streamlining processes, eliminating redundancy, even "greening" is becoming a verb for economizing on paper as well as the environment.

And being an archetype, Efficiency has it's correlate, Redundancy.

Some days I am reminded of the duality of archetypal influences, and the respect due to opposing forces. This specific example involves loss, not of a loved one, but of a days work, all over a moment of over-efficiency and under-redundancy.

On a past winter's day, I spent the day photographing a yet unexplored area, about an hour or so from my home. (This is the good news in that I can go back with relative ease). The country roads we calming, the winter sky foreboding, the light cagey at times. In the company of good friends, and fellow photographers, we found our vantage points, took our shots, and anticipated the cache of images to furnish us with a few gems.

At the end of the adventure, I downloaded the images, selecting as I always do, the option to delete the files from the memory card, once they've been saved to my hard drive. Operation complete. Commence viewing.

To my surprise and dismay, half of the images were missing from the hard drive file. They were not in the recycle bin, they were not in a temporary file, they were not in another image file, and they were alas, no longer in my memory card.

One choice, one click, one moment in favor of efficiency, and voila! My editing work was cut in half for me, and the choice to decide which half would be erased along with it.

Redundancy has a purpose. It is not necessarily an inconvenience, nor time-waster, and certainly in this case would have been a prudent and thoughtful option. Not having 20/20 foresight, I opted out.

I thus opted-in for Redundancy in image conservation going forward, and allowing the choice for Efficiency in other arenas of Life.