Musings: From Fireworks to Photographs to Facebook

        So yesterday was the fourth of July - and I did all the holiday-appropriate stuff like eating and sweating way too much, enjoying family and friends, and of course, fireworks!  During the display this year, I tried really hard to capture a firework in a picture, and it is much harder than it looks.  You have to push the button at the precise moment and I kept getting pictures of a milky, smoky sky and nothing more.  My boyfriend ended up taking some nice ones, but I wasted almost the whole show trying to get one good picture.

        That got me thinking about the fleeting moments in life that will never be captured, only remembered; and it also made me think of all the time that we all waste throughout our lives trying to wrangle our most precious moments with our cameras.  It made me a little sad to think about.  Some of my best memories are of days with friends and family that for some reason or another were never documented.  For me, and I'm sure for a lot of people if they really thought about it, these memories burn brighter than any photograph.  In this day and age, most people have cameras on them at all times; and this has enabled people to capture all kinds of images that otherwise would have been only stories.  I'm sure a lot of them are really good, but many and more of them would have been better as stories.  Isn't it fun to listen to a friend recount an experience - to see the scene through their eyes?  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes its worth even more than a thousand, and sometimes the words are better.

        Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that we don't feel like something really happened, or that we weren't really there unless there is a picture or a video to share on Facebook?  It's like living in a weird state of hyper-reality or something - it's like, if I can't update my status and tell people that I'm on my way home from work, and have people I know "like" it and comment on it, then it's not really happening at all.  If you can't share it with your "friends" on Facebook, then it's like you're living in a vacuum where nothing you do or say matters in the least.  When did we begin to feel the need to have every thought and event in our lives confirmed by "likes" and kind words from people we don't like enough to actually hang out with in person?  Don't get me wrong, I love Facebook and spend a lot of time on it - and most of my "friends" are people I hang out with pretty regularly - but the fact that I frequent social media sites doesn't make what I'm saying any less true.  Think about it - how often do you actually talk to people on the phone these days?  I can't stand to.  But how often do you carry your phone around in your hand, waiting for the notifications from your favorite games, and of course the ubiquitous Facebook.
        Remember the days of no caller I.D., when people had huge, crappy cell phones, just for emergencies?  You know, the days when little kids played outside and there were still small surprises every day?  I miss those days sometimes.  I mean, I'm like everyone else, if I lost my iphone I would probably cry, but it just feels to me that we've lost some small things along the way.  And maybe when you think about it, they aren't so small - connections between people - the impressions we make on each other.  Think about it.  And also - the next time you find yourself doing something worth remembering, try just remembering it instead of spending the day with the camera between you and the fun - you'll be surprised at the little things you miss when you're trying to catch the "big" picture.