We had “momentous moment” this week. The crane we’d often seen at the water’s edge on the way to school unexpectedly flew right across our path. It was a glorious sight, wings out stretched in clear view about half a meter in front of my grandson.
After our marvelled oohs and ahs he said he wished he’d had a camera fixed to the front of his bike so he could have filmed it. I comforted him that his built in eyes had got the shot and his memory recorded it for his archives and we joked about how our bodies came with all this built in stuff.
Later I was pondering (having had a lot of family get togethers due to my daughter’s visit from China) how often festivities come to a halt in order to be recorded. Every time a delicious spread is set before us there’s a call to the kids “don’t eat anything till we take a picture.” Hugs and greetings are frozen, avid conversation stopped for the inevitable photo.
Don’t get me wrong I’m as bad as the rest and love to see events shared on social media that I couldn’t attend or that bring back sweet memories. I do wonder sometimes though about the danger of overdoing this, that in our urge to record the “good stuff” that we might be in danger of forgetting the “now”, our lives diluting to a mere reflection of social media rather than the alive, pulsating, joy and appreciation of a fresh “now”experience.
I used to take pictures of everything. However, now that I’m older, I seldom care about what was versus what is. Like you wrote, the memories are far better than the one time shot.
what a great memorable moment that must have been
It truly was I’ve never seen a large bird fly that close, it was a little surreal.
Amen. So very true.