Memory

Last night I woke at around 3am, in a state of panic as I recalled the events of the previous night.

Me, my phone's photos and a decision to delete some of the less meaningful pictures, followed by my phone going into meltdowm and my fight with technology in the most regrettable manner.

My electronic pockets of joy, gone, within seconds.

The torment. The anxiety. The deep breaths.

I stop. I breath deeply. I remind myself that no person has died. That I am still breathing and I cannot fix this situation at 3am. As I lay there taut, I refocus my mind on my breathing. I comfort myself, hugging all the parts of me that long to reclaim the joy that I feel exiting my body. How could I have been so careless, hasty...impatient..?

Miraculously, instead of berating myself, I wonder:

Did the time on my phone take away from the actual living and making of memories? Though I grieve for the shots that I took, as blurry and imperfect as they were, how much of my life is really embedded in those photos? How much joy is derived from looking over them?

We forget the amount of time that we spend viewing our lives, our loved ones, through the lens of a phone. We are captivated by everything that is intensely pixelated and colourful and accessible by a tap and click or a quick Facebook stalk.

Maybe it's time to move on and actually remember how we felt in those moments. How did it make us feel? What were the smells, the sounds, textures, the sights?

While a photo rekindles sensations and a sense of connection to special moments, some of my most vivid life memories are by not captured in photos. They are simply memories where I remember how I felt, where I was and how old I was. They are still as powerful as ever.

Perhaps it is enough to know that when our phone breaks or our computer crashes, those experiences can come alive just as powerfully as in a photo, once more, if we only let them.