One of my regrets during my freshman year of college was the fact that I had almost no pictures of family or friends with me while I was away. At first it seemed like a small thing, but the importance became more evident every time homesickness set in or I began to miss people from back home. My lack of photos was especially clear when I would go to other dorm rooms and see other people’s pictures hanging on walls or posted on mirrors. When I came back home for the summer I decided to rectify that situation. I pulled old photos out of storage and last week I made a collage of various images I had saved from Snapchat. However, it was not until I had considered why having pictures with me was so important to me that I fully understood the value of an image and why one picture is truly worth a thousand words.
Pictures are important because they tell stories. They are literal snapshots of life capturing specific points in time and preserving them for people to revisit and contemplate at their leisure.
The images are reminders of what came before and representations of what once was. People are fluid by nature; everybody changes throughout life due to constantly being shaped and molded by various experiences. What is life but a collection of moments that shape us into what we become? Pictures are the records of those moments and different experiences. A person becomes different from how they once were and eventually they emerge as something better and more refined. Reminiscing through photos shows that growth and tells that story.
This is what causes us to look at certain pictures and smile. You laugh at the memories that resurface; the encapsulated epics which are recollected and then shared among family and friends. You remember good days, the friends that were there, and the people who stood by you every step of the way; whether times were good or bad. You realize how far you’ve come and how situations have changed. You reflect on the progression of your own story as well as the stories of the people around you.
Certain chapters of our stories we want to hold onto, keep with us wherever we go, and often share with others. This is perhaps the main reason social media is so widespread. Every person possesses their own compilation of moments; points in their own narrative. A picture is worth a thousand words because every picture grasps a moment and every moment is a piece of the larger story of a person's life. A story that is unique and worth sharing.
