When we were little we never really understood why parents were so obsessed with taking pictures. Every little thing we did as children, our moms would have a camera ready to take a few photos. On family vacations, holidays or simply family dinners, pictures were constantly snapped and it felt like it was never-ending.
As you slowly grow up, you start to realize you are taking more pictures and wanting to take these snapshots of your friends, family and everyday life. You take pictures of all the places you have been and all you new adventures. Then comes your senior year of high school where you realize that this will be the last time you do the things like homecoming, powder-puff, prom and watch football under the lights on Friday nights. So, to remember, you take as many pictures as you possibly can.
Suddenly you move to college and it is a whole new beginning. You want everyone to see all the new experiences you are going through. So to demonstrate those things, you take pictures. It can be anything from how your dorm room is set up, the first football game, all your new friends, if you rushed a sorority or if you are just apart of a group on campus. And if you're lucky to study abroad or get to go on internship and experience a new city, you go out and explore those cities and take a ton of different pictures to capture the pure beauty of everything you are witnessing. A lot of time though, those pictures do not always give the best representation of how beautiful something is or how amazing whatever your experience is.
In college, you fully understand why you always want to take pictures and what those pictures mean. Every now and then you scroll through them on your Facebook or through your phone and you just remember everything about that picture. You think about the whole story of the picture whether it is a night out or your study abroad, you get to relive that moment. In college, you find yourself wanting to relive nights because of just how incredible they were and how much you enjoyed yourself on that special occasion.
Every picture tells a story, and to some it might not mean a whole lot, but to us it is everything. Now it makes sense why our parents took so many pictures of us when we were little. It is so we can remember.
Sometimes we forget because it was so long ago or because it lost its relevance, but then you see those pictures and you just laugh and remember. A picture really does say a thousand words. I hope as we all get older and we look back at the pictures we take now we can laugh at all the crazy nights, all the firsts and all the new things we have experienced in our time here.
So don't forget to take that picture, because you never know how much you will value that moment without it.
