I’m not saying that I didn’t want to write a new blog, I’m merely observing that, in essence, I had nothing on my mind.
This is the premise for any of my blogs, as those of you who follow me, will know. I only write when something is to be said or if I have something that I would like to explore.
Often with me, exploration is a mental activity, a labyrinth of passages leading from into the next and often refusing to end until I have reached the centre and the core of what I want to say.
When I say: mental, I mean as in: ‘of the mind’, not: ‘relating to insanity’.
Although more often than not, the latter is most true.
Recently, I have been trying a new outlook on life, a much more disciplined one, a much more focused one. And as a result, I have started losing weight again, I have started exercising more and I have started to keep a diary planner, the very thought of which used to make me sick to the stomach. Now, in 2011, at the tender age of 21, I have decided that I need to start realizing the responsibilities associated with being an adult and being a professional in my chosen profession.
As one does, when one feels that the time has come to turn over a new leaf, the rest of the book has to be deleted and one has to make space for the new and exciting direction into which one is being pushed.
For me, this started with going through photos and deciding whether these photos were really a part of my brand new focus forward.
Needless to say, I deleted a substantial amount of photos.
And afterwards, I felt kind of sad.
It felt as if I was denying myself the chance to look back on these memories and really re-live them. For a day or so, I tried everything in my power to retrieve the deleted photos, (I had already emptied my recycle bin), but to no avail.
After a period of intense struggling I finally surrendered to the great force of technology and I made peace with the fact that I had lost those photos.
I was angry at myself, angry at my new focus, angry at technology, angry at the world.
The world was an unfair rugby coach and I was a timid, scrawny twelve-year old pushed into the ‘under-21’ scrum.
Later that evening, I watched the stand-up comedy DVD of Dylan Moran, entitled: “Like, totally…”. In it, Dylan made a very poignant observation. He noted and said that we spend an incredible amount of time taking pictures of ourselves on different holidays or at events or next to a celebrity. According to him, a photo was a hiatus in the experience, not a recollection of the experience.
When I racked my brain that evening, lying on my couch, I realized that what Dylan Moran had said, actually had tremendous value.
I decided, then and there, that the human race is slowly losing the ability to experience a moment, a second in time. We have lost the ability to ‘breathe’ in an experience as one would the smell of home cooking.
Why is it that we walk into a store or a restaurant or any public place, and immediately is overcome by a sense of nostalgia, because there is a particular smell that we can associate with a smell from our childhood? Why do we not need a photo to remind us of those moments when our mothers would take a casserole out of the oven and the intoxicating fragrance of rosemary would pervade the air?
Because, my dearest readers, very few of us have photos of those moments and because they were so precious to us when we were experiencing them, we engraved the entire experience: the sight, the smell, the taste and the sound into our memories so that we could always remind ourselves that there was a time when we were truly happy.
So then why is it, in this modern world of ours,that we so desperately need to document every experience we have only in terms of sight?
And now, with the advancement of technology, we have gone one step further and we have invented digital photos where we can delete an unwanted photo and pose to take another one. We have become so obsessed with getting perfect documentation of what it is that we experience on a daily basis that we forget that it’s sometimes the imperfect photos that matter the most, because in imperfect photos, we show the experience for what it truly is.
Personally, I am not a huge fan of a photo. Maybe it is because of my Aquarian nature, but I often feel robbed of my moment by posing for a flash or suddenly just seeing a flash as I was still enveloped in a beautiful sunset.
Almost always, the moment lost can never be regained.
I often find myself adjusting my posture, lifting my chin and forcing a smile whenever a camera is present at a gathering. All of this subconsciously, of course.
But in my mind, I am thinking: I should look good in this memory when I want to look at it later. And in those seconds of subconscious adjustment, I have lost countless irretrievable moments.
On a different note: how many times have we looked back at these photos and thought: was I really THAT happy at that specific moment?
How often is the answer no?
More than we would like to admit, I would say.
When Pres. Barack Obama used to be Sen. Barack Obama in 2005, he met Nelson Mandela, an honor which some have said is deemed higher than meeting the Pope. In a smokey hotel room, the two discussed several topics and Sen. Obama was so intoxicated with the experience of meeting Mr Mandela, that when the time came to take a photo, he refused to pose for one. A bystander then took an amateur photo in which Sen. Obama’s face wasn’t even visible. Years later, Pres. Obama sent that photo, signed, to Nelson Mandela, who now hangs it proudly in his office.
When I saw the photo at first, I was disappointed that no better photo was taken of two of the world’s greatest leaders. Afterwards, I realized that the amateur photo was actually a perfect example of what a photo should be. It should be a true reflection of the moment, not an interruption of it. For Pres. Obama, a photo would have intruded on the intimate moment that he was in with one of the most inspiring people on the face of the earth.
Is this not the mindset we should adopt?
I think so.
So after much deliberation I have decided that I will not cry any more crocodile tears over spilled milk, I refuse to let those photos be the only recollection I have of the memories, and often memoirs, that I have had in my 21 years on this earth.
This coming year I am going to focus on taking more ‘mental’ pictures. And when I say that, once again: mental as in ‘of the mind’ and not as in ‘relating to insanity’.
Although, once again, the latter has its strong potential.
When I take a mental picture, I would like to be fully encroached and engulfed in the sights, sounds, smells and touches of that experience. When I am old and blind one day, I need to have a gallery of pictures from whence I can choose. And when I decide to relive these experiences, I would like to be back in that moment, exactly how I remember it.
That’s the whole idea of re-living, isn’t it?
To ‘live’ a moment again, not just to see a snippet of it on a piece of glossy paper.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that we should stop taking photos. What I am saying is that we need to make sure that we have completely absorbed every aspect of every moment, every sensation, every emotion, every physical feeling; before we decide to document it.
.Maybe then, we will really start living? When we start forcing ourselves to really and truly soak in every sensation of every moment, when we start actually living in that moment, and when we treat every moment as the last one we will ever have.
Only then, when we are old, can we re-live it, not recollect it.
Here’s to a year of ‘mental’ pictures, in both senses of the word.
Say ‘cheese’ !
Barack Obama meeting Nelson Mandela in 2005.
