Thoughts Regarding The Sharing Of Memories/Experiences

As 2013 comes to a close, it is important to remember all the good things that have happened to us this year, primarily because a fair amount of bad things happened that we need to rebuild and move onwards and upwards from.  For the news-watcher with a good memory, the government shutdown in October, the Boston Marathon bombing in April, and the Philippines cyclone are a few examples of terrible things to happen to our society/mankind this year.  For the not-so-attentive person who primarily remembers insignificant pop-culture things:  Miley Cyrus (which, by the way, the Onion totally predicted in 2008….  http://www.theonion.com/video/entertainment-scientists-warn-miley-cyrus-will-be,14246/ ).

In our society, nothing good or bad ever really disappears forever because of the technological, fast-paced, information highway our culture has become.  Memories are augmented by pictures, videos, and social media now where you don’t have to remember a story completely in order to get the tale across.  In a year where the word, “selfie” became a part of our lexicon and official dictionary, I want to talk about the importance of recorded memories as a sort of connector article between the “Nostalgia” and “Social Media” ones.  Anyone that hangs out with me enough knows that I’ll be taking a photo of something or someone sooner or later and I want to try to communicate why I think photos are important to my life.

When I was three or four years old, my grandpa had a stroke that caused him to be physically incapacitated for the rest of his life.  During his 15 or so years of coping with the aftermath of the stroke, he was able to walk with the assistance of someone helping him, eat while only using one arm, and stayed confined to a comfortable sitting chair for 85% of the time I remember knowing him.  Our visits to my grandma and grandpa’s house were relatively few; we usually only went up there for Christmas and the Fourth of July.  

As I got older, my siblings and I became less impatient, squirmy kids and became more willing to talk to Grandpa in his den for extended periods of time.  In the last few years of his life, he wasn’t able to communicate clearly enough to get his whole thoughts across quickly or cohesively.  If we would come into the house with some stories about cross country or track practice, he’d try his best to tell us about the days of his track success back in high school.  One of the thoughts I remember thinking during these long stories was, “I wish I had photos to look at to get a better grasp on what he's trying to say.” 

It was because of Grandpa that I decided to make a point to photograph every event or situation I’m in that I want to remember one day, so that my memories can still be at least partially there for my own kids, grandkids, or great-grandkids one day.  I want to be able to remember the good times, the rough times, the fun times, and the hard times because all of those things are what end up coming together to define you in the end.  If my grandkids ever end up being better runners, or football players, or academics, or band players than I ever was, at least I’ll have photos to show them that I tried my best too.

I also love having photos of the people in my life who I enjoy being around because you can’t go through life without being impacted by other human beings.  I’ll admit that in five, ten, twenty, or fifty years, that those faces may not be around me making me laugh anymore, but I’ll have some photos to look at and remember the times that they did.  It is my firm belief that a full life isn’t one with just a few select people in your life.  There are more than 7 billion people for you to interact with so why not try to maintain as many happy relationships as you can?  Photography will just end up being the record-keeper of those relationships when all is said and done and our memories are slipping away from our senile minds.

One of the main ways to share information about yourself these days is through Facebook (and I guess Twitter, which I do now have but I still don’t really get the serious point of).  In the social media article I wrote, I tried to write out a few pros and cons of using these websites and there’s one more pro (which can also be a con) that I want to address.  Posting too much revealing information about yourself and your friends is definitely something to shy away from because the ways that people can deduce your more secretive, personal information are becoming much more intricate as technology evolves.  However as long as you trust yourself to have a good handle on what to share and what not to share, social media is a virtual gift to help record your life.  

Sure, there’s no way I’ll want to try to explain some of the stuff on my Facebook to my kids (/future wife, Emma Watson, when she asks about why my friends posted so much stuff about her on my wall) one day, but if you’re keeping the inappropriate crap or embarrassing spelling errors to a minimum, it’s going to be a pretty clean looking venue to scroll back through once the first generation of Facebook is closing in on their mid-life crises.  As I’ve used my own Facebook page pretty solidly to add photos to, I’ve regarded it as a digital back-up to my initial photo uploads and I have a feeling this record-keeping will really come in handy in my future.

Since words like selfies and photobombs exist in the world today, it is true that there is a psychological element to taking photos, but that shouldn’t deter someone from sharing or recording a unique, funny, interesting, or serious experience that has happened in their life.  One thing about people, in general, that I don’t find all that great is that a lot of people tend to misinterpret someone else’s self-acknowledgement of success, creativity, or enthusiasm for a selfish brag or arrogant pat-on-the-back.  

Here’s an example of what I mean.  Someone says or posts that they feel blessed (#blessed) to have this opportunity to speak at an interesting ceremony or something.  In my mind there are two ways to view that: You can (A) either be really sour that this particular person doesn’t deserve to speak anywhere because they aren’t really all that great in real life, or you can (B) be happy that this person will soon be having an awesome life experience and you hope that you’ll have one to match it soon.  Here’s what I think you should do:  Option B.  Be happy for the person that their life seems to be doing great, and try your hardest to go out there and have a few life experiences that will make you that happy.  If you try, you’ll get that experience soon enough and you also won’t waste a part of your life being kinda negative for no legitimate reason.

As I posted in the nostalgia article, it’s also important not to get too hung up on the past because you can’t ever live that moment again.  You can try to recreate it.  You can try to live out your life in a way that gets you the same feeling of happiness you once had.  But you won’t ever be in the same time and space that you took a happy photo with all of your best friends, or a memorable game where your team won, or even when you were first introduced to your sibling or your first son/daughter.  Don’t unhealthily live in the past; live in the present where you are feeling just as happy, if not happier, as you once did.

Anyways, I’ll try to wrap this up by saying that I don’t want to go through life happily taking in moments as they come.  I want to go through life happily taking in moments as they come and getting a photo of them so that I’ll be able to look at them again one day when I can no longer remember why the event or the person originally made me happy.  I have absolutely no clue if this is a normal opinion to have, but I’m enjoying my life way too much to want to ever lose any of it.  Thanks for reading, and I recommend taking a few more photos whenever you get the chance.  Also I feel that a fair amount of what I write seems like it belongs in a life-help book, so I apologize for accidentally writing in that style haha.

Thoughts Regarding Physical Appearance/Maintenance

I thought an interesting topic to write about today would be something that’s a prevalent part of our society today.  Physical appearance, which can directly relate to self-perception and awareness of one’s self in the world, is something that is weighted a little too much in the eyes of others, in my opinion.  I want to give my thoughts on how you should view someone and what I think you can do to be healthier. 

   

Just to get this started, I’ll give a brief description of how I view myself physically.  Even though I would prefer you to already know what I look like before reading this.  I am a 6’2”, 178lb, Caucasian male who most people would describe as a conservative 8/10 and usually 9.6/10 when they’re being really honest with themselves.  Alright, so I’m kidding, but I think one part of enhancing your own physical appearance is having a strong, positive opinion about who you are and what you look like.  Someone who constantly spends a majority of their time looking at themselves in a mirror, picking out which clothes they look best in, and making unnecessary comments about someone else’s physical attributes is not someone I find particularly attractive as a person.  Someone who accepts who they are, embraces their own body, and tries to make the best out of any given situation is someone who is worth knowing in my book (or blog, I guess).

It’s a real shame that our society puts so much focus on people’s looks because that is the most superficial thing you can like about someone.  Growing up, kids are excluded and alienated because they don’t look a certain way or dress a certain way and sometimes it takes its toll on their psyche.  I think that sort of bullying kind of peters off during/after college, but physical appearance is oftentimes a factor in getting a job or succeeding at work.  Our society (or maybe just CNN) places enough emphasis on looks to report on times when celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence, Beyonce, or Emma Watson get their haircut and treat it like it is legitimate news.  You should never try to aspire to be like a celebrity in that sense, because it is almost completely unattainable and not healthy to do. 

 

There are 7 billion people on this planet and, unfortunately, not all of them are going to be physically appealing to every single human being.  That’s where you have to decide that you want to know someone more than just how they are on the outside and stop writing people off because they aren’t a certain way.  Last week, I read this article about how Pope Francis had hugged and blessed a man with severe full-body tumors (pictured below) which really backed up my belief that that’s how everyone should treat one another.  

                                  

Switching gears into the maintenance side of physical appearance, I want to start by saying that I believe anyone can be in good shape if they don’t have an extremely severe, exercise-induced asthma condition, have two functioning legs, and have a working understanding of what food is/does to your body when consumed in extreme portions.  However, if you don’t share these same views as me, it’s totally cool to be who you are regardless and do whatever you want.

I consider myself to be in shape and I work relatively hard to keep that opinion.  This is a fun fact about me, but one of my main life goals is to not have a gut ever (which I’m really not trying to throw out as a brag about not having a gut now) and I do try to maintain a lifestyle where I shouldn’t really have to worry about my metabolism not keeping up.  However, one thing that kind of gets to me is when people around me complain that they don’t have time to stay in shape, they don’t like going to the gym or running, or they don’t understand how I can be in such good shape with the copious amounts of food and drink I consume regularly.  

The reason why this annoys me a little is because it’s not easy to be in a shape that you can be personally happy with and it’s going to take work.  Honestly, the main reason I run or work out so much is because I actually enjoy it.  The times I don’t enjoy it are times when I feel like I’m missing out on some social activity or it’s really freezing outside.  But I enjoy doing it because I know how it benefits me and I do actually feel good doing it.  People need to want to exercise for their own personal health over how they think other people see them.  For me, I run and I don’t eat a ton of greasy pizza so that I won’t have a heart condition at age 25 and be permanently entrapped on a couch at age 50.  Having a grade A body is simply a benefit of working hard for it and it is definitely a hard thing to do.

Maybe all of these complaints get to me because I hear them mostly from college-aged kids a lot.  When you’re in college, let’s be honest, there’s a fair amount of free time that is usually dedicated to how much one drinks.  Since I’m pretty sure beer, vodka, wine, rum, and even pop aren’t supposed to be positive supplements to the body, I try to balance out the negatives with a positive run or workout the next day instead of being totally hungover and watching Hulu/Netflix for the majority of my day.  It is usually the most painful thing in the world to do but I try and see it as a just punishment for being a loud, annoyingly happy drinker.  

I kind of slid off topic for a second, but the point of that was that you have to really make time and dedicate effort to be healthy and college kids usually do have the time.  Even if that means going on a midnight run to the gym, getting off work at 5pm and pushing yourself out the door to get to your next exercise class, or lying on the floor doing ab exercises while watching a hilarious episode of Parks and Recreation.  You end up feeling better for it (if not immediately, then in the long run) and I’m guessing you’ll live a little bit longer.  

What I wanted this article to be about was not changing for other people but changing for you.  Become fit because you want to be healthy.  Eat what you want if you can be sure you won’t regret it down the road.  Balance out your time between watching hours of sports/movies/video games/web surfing and time outside.  Within the next decade, when my generation and I get past our best metabolism years, who wanted to be healthy is going to show and I promise I won’t be one of the people complaining about my middle-aged gut.  

As a closer, I feel like this article could give off an overly aggressive vibe or something demanding you to live a certain way which was not my intention.  I just couldn’t really think of a way to write which would give my true opinions and also not seem like I don’t take this topic seriously.  There’s a reason America is one of the more overweight countries of the world, and I think it’s a totally solvable problem when people have the time and prioritize accordingly.  Thanks for reading!