Have you ever felt as if you can’t hold onto a moment as much as you wish you could? Have you ever felt like time is fleeting and you find yourself standing idle, wishing you could remember every minute detail of this passing moment? If you responded yes to any of these questions, unfortunately this feeling is not a good one, and join the club, my friend. In fact, this feeling has the potential to be extremely defeating and in the following paragraphs, I hope to further explore this phenomenon.

Though these feelings may occur to a lesser degree on a daily basis, I do continue to find myself struggling with this. I recently came back from a month abroad. A month full of these fleeting moments I wish I could catch in jars and place on my shelf because they were essentially so unique. I returned from my trip with an abundance of stories and pictures to share with friends and family and with each lunch or cup of coffee I had those first couple days back, I realized something about my generation and ultimately people living in this day and age; lack of motivation to preserve details. There is something so sacred about details and I always find myself compelled to preserve them and honor the value they add to memories. Why is it that details have become a thing of the past? Why is it that details have become something extra that can be left out?

A wise person once told me the more one tells a story, the more that story changes. At first, this statement made me think and once I digested the meaning behind it, I was shaken. This only made me pay more attention to detail and drive me to journal more often because how could I let valuable memories slip through my fingers just like that? Just because I’m too lazy to recall the color of the sweater I was wearing that day.

Thinking about how we communicate and spread ideas these days, I can’t help but to blame not only the people, but social media for somehow forcing us to cut everything short. There’s a culture of making everything short and sweet in order to save time, but what good does that really do? Sure, we can get our news brief while in the coffee line, we can see what that long lost friend is up to while walking our dogs, or we can let the world know about virtually anything in our lives in under 140 characters, but again, what about the details? We get so caught up in the big picture that we fail to look deeper and ask for more. So I propose you challenge yourself and make an effort to pay attention to detail and make an effort to open your eyes every once in a while. There is so much out there in this world to see and it would be almost a crime not to stop and take it all in — and not through a filter or a lens. Moments may feel as though they are fleeting, they may feel as though they’re slipping right through your fingers, but you have the ability and, quite frankly, the responsibility to keep these moments alive.