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.
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