Should I capture the moment
I share this little thought with the community here and would really love some feedback to decide whether I should write a more lenghty exposition on this thought.
You have probably seen the above picture many times.
I remember having seen it a few different times on different platforms but it was only two months ago that it stood out to me for reasons I am now going to share.
This picture was taken during the Black Mass film premiere in Brookline.
While everybody else around the lovely old woman was capturing the moment through the mechanical eye of a device, there was someone who had enough courage to withstand the implicit pressure to conform and just stand and enjoy the moment by taking it in.
I am sure that they all went back home with a different experience.
There was a group of people, that went home with moving pictures and sounds they could replay to their friends and family and share their experience.
The old woman went home with a story to tell. She would have to use words to express what her eyes saw, adjectives to quality her emotions. She would summon her memories that would have particular emotions associated to distinct events of the day.
I don’t know about you but there is just nothing like sitting comfortably in a couch listening to a person narrate something they have experienced. The closest thing to that is reading a story in a book.
I love it when my friends tell me about their trips, what they experienced, how the food tasted, the funny moments, the facepalm incidents. While it’s not digital, it’s real. I would take that anytime over a hundred pictures.
Can you really capture the moment? Maybe. But when you pull your phone to re-live the moment, all you can really do is replay some pictures because a moment cannot be lived a second time. That’s why you live it the first time, because a moment only lasts for….a moment. Live the moment, don’t capture it.
Now, there is a balance. I am not against picture taking and video shots. I do it all the time. But we should not, under any circumstance live and experience things by looking at a screen. We ought to be able to take in, experience something as it’s happening.
What’s your take on this?
