I'm guilty of being the sentimental person that always attempts to "capture the moment" by snapping a picture; "I need this photo to look back on!" But why? On some occasions even I question my own need to handle moments in my future life, while being alive in the present. Do I acquire these "memories" to force a smile on a rainy day, or do I subconsciously have a fear that every lovable moment in life will suddenly be as good as it gets, leaving me with absolutely nothing but a runaway train of thoughts to recall the peak of my own personal existence.
Lately, I've been desperate to put an end to my sneaking suspicion that my life, as I know it, could go down a boring path of no return, and I have begun searching through my past in hopes of coming across proof that happiness is a renewable resource that is available at all ages.
As I go through pages of scrapbooks and screenshots on Facebook of these little glossy time machines, I realize that is not the photo itself that brings on the recollection of old times; the picture only triggers my brain to take me back to the moment it captured. A picture can't tell you what you were thinking or feeling in that split second of photography, especially when you mask your body language with a smile, no matter what the surroundings are. But, when you look at a photo and suddenly your whole heart fills with the same lust for the life you were living in the picture, or you start to laugh uncontrollably as your synapses buzz with a forgotten punchline or even when you get an eyeful of something you've since then lost, you taste for and you cringe at your former self. This means you're feeling something. We all want to feel something. We also love a good bargain, so when we feel something, we'd like to gamble our emotions and capture that feeling in hopes to enjoy it later, with interest. Why is it a gamble you ask? We're not perfect predictors of anything, especially not ourselves or emotions in general. So what we hope will put a smile on our face, could easily wreck our day. (That is a subtweet to you, ex-boyfriends.)
What are we really chasing here? Do we want a timeline of our life, a reminder that we were once fun, or artsy, or popular? Or perhaps we wish to prove to other people in the moment just how great we are. Maybe we even document our own lives publicly and privately to reassure ourselves.
No matter what it is that drives our candid camera craze, I'm personally obsessed with it. And I'm okay with that. Although I do wish people, myself included, would take more time to write out what it is that they're feeling, I know a picture is worth a thousand words, but words are far from worthless.
