Last week, this photo, taken at the "Black Mass" film premiere in Brookline, Mass., has gone viral on social media, and the Internet just cannot get enough of this woman.
What’s interesting about this photo is the bold statement this small woman is making. The people around her are engaging with their phones and not with actual human beings: taking pictures of what is happening in the moment instead of actually living it.
The beauty of a smart phone stems from its ability to connect society with the world; however, its only defect is its tendency to isolate us from staying in the moment and seeing it with our own eyes rather than on a small screen.
Like many people of our generation, saving a memory is as easy as tapping the screen of an iPhone with the idea of going back to look at all the pictures. To be completely honest, these photos probably ended up sitting in your camera roll. The storage space on our phones are filled with selfies, screenshots, memes, foods, and everything that can be captured by the lens of your phone, with the idea of never remembering what it was like seeing your favorite band live, or eating the best pancake you’ve ever had without seeing a picture of it. We spend a longer time finding the perfect angle and figuring out which filter to add to later be posted on Instagram.
This image serves to prove that we should be less concerned with taking a picture to remember a memory, and more concerned with actually enjoying the moment. It’s hard to resist the urges of posting on social media, and it seems almost impossible to go a day without snapping a picture. Snapchat is an app we all use every day, and it really encourages the users to capture every little thing we are experiencing. We share things in our story that we think are super cool and interesting but in reality, we end up tapping through the pictures rapidly without really looking.
Sure we can capture the moment at any given time, but that does not mean we should every second of the day. It’s tough to say that the pictures we find so interesting and necessary to post aren’t actual depictions of our lives. It almost seems that our self-worth is based on the number of likes we receive online.
This woman is the perfect example of why we need to just live in the moment and enjoy it. There is no need to interrupt a good time just to pull out your phone. I’m not saying that you should never take a picture again, I’m simply encouraging you to not live in your phone. Let’s be real, seeing a concert or a sunset through your unfiltered eyes is a way better view than anything online. Life just appears to be more enjoyable this way. Just ask the lady in the photo who's living in the moment.