Live your Best Life
And Remember It
Have you ever done something awesome without taking photos because you thought it might take away from its awesomeness? Were you afraid of not being able to fully experience that thing? Of making a meaningful moment meaningless? Did you ever wonder whether you were making the right call? That was me last Christmas.
Maybe because of the heat, I never really warmed to Christmas in Australia. Born and bred in Germany, my memories of Christmas come very close to the fairy-tale ideal: singing Christmas carols in front of a real Christmas tree with the family on Christmas eve, our faces illuminated only by the flickering light of real candles; the scent of pine, moss, homemade Christmas biscuits and beeswax in the air, while outside in the cold, dark night, fresh snowflakes are silently settling on the bare branches of our pear tree. Pure magic. (Seriously, I’m not even making this up!)
With my kids only knowing BBQs and dips in the neighbour’s pool at Christmas, I was aching for them to be able to experience a traditional German Christmas. So, when we could finally afford to pay for return flights between Brisbane and Cologne to spend Christmas with my family, I couldn’t wait to make new memories of magical moments. Christmas Eve came, and it was even better than I had hoped. Tree, candles, biscuits, presents, my sister and my two brothers, my Dad and my then 96-year-old nan, and (of course) my husband and kids, all together, having a ball — it was glorious. Just the way I had dreamt it would be. And because I didn’t take any pictures, I enjoyed every perfect, unmediated second of it. I chose to be ‘present’ instead.
In case you hadn’t noticed, being ‘present’ is a thing right now. And it’s hot. Kourtney Kardashian was one of the first to talk about the importance of ‘being present’ when spending time with your family, and big pop-stars like Jack White, Adele and Beyonce are encouraging their fans to stop documenting their performances, and to just be there ‘in real life’. Some, like Bob Dylan, have even gone as far as banning photography during their shows. But does taking photos really take away from an experience? Does it prevent us from ‘being there’ and from fully experiencing whatever it is we’ve come to experience? Was I right not to take photos during my most bestest, favouritest family Christmas ever?
Yes. No. Well, it depends. Whenever we have a photo opportunity, three core factors determine whether taking photos will make an experience more or less enjoyable and memorable for us. Firstly, there is our level of engagement. Engagement with an experience is the key to how much we enjoy it and, subsequently, how well we are able to remember it. Because our attention is limited by our cognitive ability to focus on only one task at a time, traditional modes of multi-tasking (e.g. watching TV while checking facebook) force us to switch between tasks, without being able to fully engage with either, and lower engagement equals lower enjoyment. Thankfully though, taking pictures is different. Rather than focussing your attention away from an experience, taking pictures of it focuses your attention towards the experience. This actually allows more active engagement, which in turn translates to increased enjoyment.
But before you start snapping away at every given opportunity, there are other factors to consider. Although we probably should, a lot of the time we don’t just take pictures for the fun of it, and our reason for pushing the photo button directly affects our level of enjoyment of an experience, even as it unfolds. When we take photos capturing personally significant experiences for ourselves, or to share with our immediate circle of friends and family, sharing them comes with the positive effects of strengthening social bonds and an increase in our personal well-being and sense of belonging. This already makes us feel good when we take the photo.
However, snapping pics intended for sharing within the ‘collapsed contexts’ of our digital environments can actually lead us to enjoy things less. While that picture you posted of yourself with your partner at a restaurant might trigger fond memories of a lovely evening celebrating your anniversary, some un-connected Instagram follower might just look at it thinking that your bum looked big in that dress. In this context, we are unable to enjoy an experience as much as we would have without taking photographs. That’s because even as we take the picture, we are already worried about its self-presentational aspects. Unless you really don’t care about what people think (good for you!) or your last name is Kardashian. Then you can post photos that remind you of meaningful personal moments AND show people how big your bum looked in that dress.
So whilst there are some definite perks to being a bit trigger-happy with your camera, depending on why you are taking the photo, you run the risk of ruining the whole experience for yourself. That’s if you depend on the shots for your ‘identity curation’, or if you would feel overwhelmed by the pressure of trying to capture fleeting moments that mean the world to you (like a very special Christmas celebration…).
In that case, you are better off just immersing yourself in the experience, and relying on other mechanisms of memory preservation. Long-term couples, for example, have been shown to have ‘transactive memories’, meaning that partners effectively complement each other’s memory. (Although this can sometimes have the interesting side-effect of you remembering amazing things that never really happened, just because your partner said so.)
The point is that you shouldn’t feel bad about taking pictures to preserve your memory of enjoyable experiences. Maximising your engagement and therefore your enjoyment doesn’t mean that you have to put your phone away, as long as you are taking pictures just for fun or for your own memory preservation. Even if the only pictures I have of my special Christmas celebration are grainy and blurred, I’ll be forever grateful that my husband secretly recorded my family’s Christmas-carol-singing (no matter how cringe-worthy) and other special Christmas moments when I was too overwhelmed to even notice.
It’s impossible to take a photo that includes every detail of an event as you experience it — the sound of the sea while you are watching the sunset over the ocean, or the smell of Christmas biscuits. But, having been there and experienced it, a picture that captures even a small, static part of a special moment can jog your memory to remember all of those things, taking you back to the most favouritest, bestest times of your life — so you really can cherish them forever.
