Counting Blessings

     Last night I was trying to download the new update for the Iphone, and I was informed I didn't have enough memory left to support it.  I've had the dropbox app for a while now, but  I didn't set it to automatically upload my whole camera roll because I knew that I didn't want to keep everything.  So I spent two hours going through the whole thing, picture by picture, and I was struck by the succession of monumental moments - good and bad.  It was like excavating through layers of time and made me think of the city of Istanbul, with its sedimentary layers of cultural and historical remnants.
      My camera roll only goes back about a year and a half, but a lot has happened in my life during that time.  I was in a car accident a little over a year ago, that could have been fatal.  Pre-surgery pics and post-surgery pics, X-rays, and the ones of the mangled car.  A major portion of my pictures are of Sal Paradise, my beloved feline friend, who ran away at about a year old, without so much as a parting word.  Those pictures were harder for me to go through than ones from the accident.  There were also so many good memories that warmed my heart to flip through.  Vacations with great friends, some of whom live far away now.  Visits with my family, which I cherish greatly because there is more distance than I would like between us.  Weddings, christenings, holidays, random happy days - they were all there, buried beneath sets of multiple pics of mixed drinks and random pairs of shoes bound for Instagram.
      I think everyone should take a moment to go through the pictures in their phones from the very beginning, but try to look with the eyes of a stranger.  These are freeze-frames of time that you wanted to capture and hold on to.  What impression would a stranger get from peeking into your life through the lens of your camera phone?  I'm willing to bet that they'd see a lot of joy and love.  Doubtlessly there is hardship peppered throughout - but what would the joy mean to you
without the hardship?
      A great friend who is wise beyond her years told me something recently that hasn't left my mind since.  She told me that if the entire world gathered together and everyone threw their problems and issues into a giant pit, and then everyone took turns re-drawing, you would be lucky to get your own problems back.  Maybe really lucky.  Life is really short, people.  Way shorter than we realize on a daily basis.  Judge it by the moments you deemed important enough to document and you'll be surprised at how obvious the blessings and miracles are and how often they occur.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ#