“Smile,” my father says, as I drag my two suitcases throughout the Newark airport and out to his car. As smiling as one can be from a 6-hour flight, I let out a smirk without teeth of course. Immediately, I ask to see the picture and grimace. It was probably the mix of dim lighting and the blemish exposing itself on my left cheek that made me hate this photograph.
Looking back though, my dad didn’t care about how I looked. He was just happy that I was home so that he can look back one day and remember the time he picked me up from the airport after not seeing me for 5 months. Honestly, my favorite past time is looking back at old pictures. A picture, after all, is for the memories and I think we forget about that sometimes.
Living in such a social media prominent world, most people use either Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or Snapchat. It is what we choose to post that can be interesting. Some people have a really good flow of pictures or are just insanely photogenic. What happened to posting pictures that are just purely you? The ones were taken on accident.
Maybe the one that you laughed so hard you started tearing up, or the one where your mouth drops to the floor as you accidentally let go of the heavy pumpkin in your hand. Nothing makes me smile more than being able to look at pictures and feel the way you felt in that moment.
To see personality, voice and character all captured in someone’s moment is breath-taking. We all love seeing wedding day pictures and babies first birthday pictures, but we also enjoy seeing photos filled with true laughter and happiness. There is something about genuine emotions captured in photographs that we all can relate to.
However, when taking and posting pictures there seems to be only a certain amount of exposure one wants to give when displaying themselves on social media accounts; like there are some underlying rules of what dooms a picture for the ‘real Insta’ or the ‘finsta’. It is crazy how Instagram is almost us trying to represent our best positive selves, while 'finsta' seems to be an accumulation of our worst/negative moments.
Most of the time I think that the fake Insta is a more accurate representation of one's life and personality versus the perfectly posed one on Instagram. I, for one, always run pictures that I am thinking of posting by my friends to see what they think. We all seem to have albums of embarrassing photos that we would be hesitant to share.
Most of the time you only see certain angles and poses that people want you to see, but I’m always more attracted to the silly photos. The ones where you let out a laugh. Whether these photos are of good quality or not, they represent the moments of your life and to be able to hold onto just one moment a little bit longer is worth it.
We will never be as young as we are at this very moment and we should take advantage of that. It’s the youth in our hearts that keep us alive after all, so be silly and let your guard down. Don’t worry about how others see you. Feed your friends pizza, jump on trampolines with 5-year-olds and use the dog filter on Snapchat.
What matters is your happiness and your perspective on the world. Something makes it worth it for all of us to be here. Whether it’s achieving our dreams, inspiring our friends and family or just being a part of the journey.
Just remember you are you. You are the person that might smile with their mouth slightly open or squint your eyes when you’re laughing really hard. All of these candid poses are the real you and don’t be afraid to show that sometimes. If you don’t want to post it, just remember to smile and save it to your camera roll for the memories.
