Digital vs Real Life Memories

I often feel torn between capturing a memory on camera and being in the moment. When I see something beautiful out in the mountains it’s instinctual to whip out my phone and take a picture, but as I walk away I feel conflicted because I only took two seconds to look at it with my eyes. I have a digital memory to recall later but I wasn’t living it in my own flesh, blood and cornea at the time.

Deep down I think I take photos for 3 reasons, vanity, fear and awe. Vanity as, shock horror, I too am swept up in the world of boasting on socials of the wild untamed places I’ve been to. Fear, because I don’t trust my ability to remember, and the more I stress about remembering the more the magic hand rubs the giant eraser all over my brain. And awe because when we see something beautiful our hearts want a way to bottle that moment forever.

I hiked the Iceline trail, in British Columbia the other day with my iPhone. I was amazed by the desolate rocky mountain terrain contrasting white glaciers and icy creek beds. Snap snap, I took photos as a visual reference, excited to share with my partner when I made it back home. Consumed by the feeling of awe I took 10-20 photos all of which, when I used them for show and tell, captured little to none of the dramatic landscape I had observed in being there.

While I was hiking I could feel it from my sun hat down to the sole of my boots, I wanted to be in the moment. I wanted to look longer, crouch by water, take off my socks and sit a while, instead I snap, snapped and propelled forward with the mission, memory in hand. The saddest thing is, I feel if my brain knows I have a memory secured on my phone it relinquishes the responsibility to store it away, writing it off as the excuse of the lost art of remembering.

Maybe I’m just being hard on myself, and the ratio of seeing to screen time was a blimp in reality. Either way, I still feel this deep challenge inside of myself to LOOK first, to SLOW, to BE in the moment long enough to take a mental picture. To undo this habit of reaching in my pocket and blocking my view of the real thing with a digital screen before I’ve breathed it in. I’m not advocating for photography-free hikes, I still value having printable memories, especially on hard days when I can reflect and remind myself I have had fun this year. I just wonder if I slowed down now, breathed, saw first, that maybe one day when I’m wrinkled and weathered, I can sit with my thoughts and remember those places in my minds eye, tell stories and share the richness of those experiences from the heart, with descriptions that paint the imagination as opposed to a flash of a screen.

Here’s to nurturing the lost art of remembering. May you be encouraged to look first.