I love doing monthly dumps of photos on my Instagram story. I find it is a fun way to look back at how the past few weeks have gone for me. Do I have lots of cool flicks from a bunch of excursions I went on, or maybe I was really locked in with my school work. These things show me how my life is looking through pictures, and also show me what I seem to be missing or hope to accomplish in the future.
There is one slight problem to this. I am HORRIBLE at remembering to take pictures, or if I do they are silly 0.5’s or uninteresting screenshots.
While I mourn the fact that I was unable to fully “capture” my life on camera, I also am glad that I was able to capture the moment in person and have it cemented in my memories, not through a screen.
I feel like there is so much expectation today to document everything with our phones. People go on outings with their friends with the sole objective of having a photoshoot, or they dress up for even the simplest of tasks in hopes that someone will get a good candid of them. Don’t get me wrong, I am not dissing this in any way. I have done these things myself, sometimes you just have to get a good pick for the ‘gram.
However, it is when this idea that we need to get the perfect picture takes over how we live our everyday lives that it becomes a problem. If we are constantly thinking about capturing the moment on camera then we forget to really capture the moment in person as it is happening.
There is a certain disconnect from reality that happens when we are focused on looking at life through a screen. It’s as if we are focused on our future selves looking back in the past rather than living in the present.
I always think back to my concert experiences as an example of this. For my first few concert experiences, I was obsessed with videoing all my favorite songs, but ended up paying attention to my camera than actually singing along and enjoying the music. Yes, it’s great that I have those moments on my phone to rewatch, but do I ever really rewatch those videos? No, I don’t.
Instead, I now take a few pictures and maybe video a 10-second clip of certain songs, then spend the rest of the concert immersed in the music that I paid to witness live. This way my experience is grounded in that moment, making it more personal.
As much as I love being able to look back at my pictures and measure how my life is going through them, I also realize that it is okay to put the phone down and live in the moment. Sometimes it is best to capture a moment in your memories rather than through a lens.
So, the next time you are looking through your camera role and are upset that you don’t have picture proof of certain events in your life to show your friends, be glad that you were able to experience it in real life instead. Be glad for the memory of it.