It’s time to put our phones down and live.
I was sitting on the couch with my family recently, watching a football game. Right after a big play, I noticed a woman in the stands using her phone to try to capture everything around her. To do that, she had to watch what was happening through her phone, missing the bigger picture.
I’ve been that woman. A LOT. I’m a photographer at heart so it’s tempting to capture everything, now that our phones make it so easy. When I do that, though, I’m watching my life happen through the tiny lens of the camera, rather than on the big screen of real life.
We don’t need this many captured memories sitting in a cyberspace cloud. We need them experienced in real time, full frame, treasuring the moments as they happen, and storing them away in our hearts the old-fashioned way.
I’m definitely not against taking photos or videos, but I am appealing to myself and to you to take less. Less pictures and more presence! Let’s be in the here and now when the good stuff is happening live. Let’s live in the experience, not in the photo-making of it.
My phone is an important tool for so many things now. Many of those things are positive and life-enhancing. But today I am setting the intention of putting the phone down more often when I’m tempted to overuse the camera function. I want to enjoy my life and go back to capturing more memories using my eyes, ears, mind and heart.
My husband went hunting yesterday and while sitting in his tree stand, a squirrel climbed up to a branch right across from him and paused to eat a nut. My husband really wanted to record it on video, but was afraid to move, afraid he would spook the squirrel and make him run off.
I’m glad he was able to just take it in and enjoy the moment fully, and then be able to come home and tell me about it. That was enough. We don’t need a picture of a squirrel chewing on a nut taking up space in our cloud storage.
In fact, many of the things I capture are great in the moment, but not that relevant later. Why am I choosing to miss out on fully being in a memorable moment, distracted by using my camera, only to take a video or photo (or ten, or twenty) that I’m not even going to watch later?
My cloud storage just keeps growing and I have to keep increasing my memory package, which costs me money every month. At first my free phone storage was sufficient. Then I upgraded to a $0.99 per month cloud package. Then I had to increase the storage to $2.99/month. Now I’m at $9.99/month.
Where does it end? And for what? For files where maybe 1 in 100 is truly memorable and worth saving? All this digital data is becoming another form of clutter for me to “someday” attend to. I already keep too much physical stuff. I don’t need to continually expand my cloud footprint also.
Not everything is meant to be held onto, beyond the moment it happened. Perhaps it’s time for me to embrace minimalism in my digital photography.
Life is meant to be lived. We don’t have to use a phone to try to capture every single thing that amazes and delights us. Let’s fully capture the moments we live with open eyes and full hearts. This is probably going to be harder than I think, but it’s my new intention. Who else needed to hear this today, besides me?
