I set up an account over the weekend. Maybe I was jealous of all the instagrammy goodness going on out there...all my friends' square-shaped pics that flood my newsfeed. So here I am, a new account holder. Ready to take pictures of...I have absolutely no idea what. Especially after my recent epiphany about chronicling. I guess we'll just see what I can come up with. Hopefully more than just the funny things my cat does. (Although for the record, she's thrilled about potentially being featured. She's still glowing from the recent Monopoly game piece addition.)
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I love this commercial so much. And not just because of the piano music. To me, it's about life. Capturing it, sharing it. When you think about all the things we see in our lives, it's simply impossible to preserve all these memories without documenting them somehow. Isn't it?
The other school of thought on this topic can be summed up by John Mayer's Three by Five, a song I've always taken to heart. Because when our focus is on snapshooting our way through life (an event, a vacation, a sunset, whatever), we, in my opinion, get less out of the experience as we are having it.
While at an Indians game this weekend, it was the bottom of the 9th and a win was headed our way. Wanting to capture the winning run and the crowd's response, I readied my phone and managed (after a few dud plays) to hit record at just the right time. Success! Although it occurred to me as the crowd went victory-wild that I had failed to actually watch that final play. I'd been so focused on my little phone and making sure it was positioned correctly that I had to actually ask what exactly had happened, how the run had been scored. In my effort to preserve the moment, I had missed it completely. And I'll never get that moment back. Sure, I have a grainy, unfocused few seconds of footage shot from the upper deck, but I would gladly exchange that for the experience of having actually watched the runner slide into home plate and erupted into cheers with my fellow Clevelanders. Maybe today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame. Take it away, Mr. Mayer.
