Life isn't meant to be lived through a lens. I need to hear that everyday, more than once a day. More often than not, I feel like life is one endless Instagram feed of "perfect" moments. When I go out with my friends it is an unspoken rule that whoever has the best iPhone take more than one picture and that there be more than one pose. Because ya know of course, we all must post. Oh and can't forget photo creds to the poor person lucky enough to have the best camera, who has bent and tilted and zoomed and focused for the last 10 minutes for one perfect photo that the world will marvel at.
There is nothing wrong with that. We are all pretty much guilty. I mean after all that incomparable feeling of satisfaction of capturing the perfect selfie lasts all of 30 seconds, but boy is it good while it lasts. All sarcasm aside, it isn't inherently bad--all the trouble we go through and that tiny victorious feeling we get. In fact one day the pictures will be all that we have to look back on. Time is preserved in an instant and captured in a single moment, and really that's pretty amazing.
But I think we also tend to decrease the value of a moment to a post, and that's where it becomes not okay. As I began to reflect on this, I took a stroll down memory lane, stalking my own posts on the "gram". What I found was that I indeed remember the pictures being taken, but for the most part what I remembered about the pictures were that they were the ones that made the cut, the best in a mini photo shoot with the sole purpose of a single perfect post. One that would make my followers stop, be wowed, and double tap.
For a good majority of the pictures, I remember planning them out beforehand. "When we go/ do [insert place or activity] I'm gonna post a pic of me with [whomever/ whatever]; alright now I can focus on a killer caption."
Then once I have a variety of pictures with only slight differences to choose from, I can spend forever debating on which filter makes my complexion look better and makes the picture look classy (if that's even a thing). Then finally, I post and wait for the likes to start rolling in. My capturing of a moment has demanded many moments to accompany it.
What's wrong with this? I spend more time thinking about capturing and really more or less creating the perfect moment than actually experiencing the million little moments in between. And it's those little things that truly matter in the end. You don't know which of those moments are contributing significantly to the BIG PICTURE, ironically enough, and you won't know until you look back one day and the puzzle is finished.
When I'm 80 I want to remember more than a post or a picture that broke my record of most likes. I want to remember the way the breeze off the ocean felt as I sipped my coffee. I want to remember the details of meaningless conversations and the radio changing itself to punk rock on long road trips. And I do want to have photos (lots of them) to take me back in time, but I don't want the pictures to take my time.
Somewhere there has to be a happy medium. I do not intend to deactivate my Insta. In fact this week I've posted more than any other week, and that's okay too. But I do intend to spend less time creating a perfect post and more time living a life that a post could never do justice to. After all Facebook is apparently going to delete them all anyway, just kidding or maybe not. Who knows any more?
There's a life beyond the lens so put the camera down, and stop creating perfect moments; take some time to make memories, real ones, the kind that are perfectly imperfect. Memories are one of the only things that people can never take away from you. Oh and they won't need a filter!
