Having a camera in your pocket can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you can capture special moments to be remembered later or shown to your kids and grandchildren. You can catch funny failures, and even play your part in recording history while being present at major events.
On the other hand, it continuously takes you out of the moment. Instead of watching your child grow up, you ensure to get the right angle on his first steps. Instead of watching Kendrick Lamar kill it all directly, you focus on keeping the screen steady.
While photos and videos let you keep a record of a moment, they do not let you fully experience the moment.
In this day and age, we are hardly ever able to live in the moment. We are continuously planning for the future or thinking about the past. When times are tough, we distract ourselves with rectangular screens, deliberately depriving ourselves of those moments.
And this has caused anxiety and depression levels to rise. On the other hand, Western psychology has finally caught on mindfulness – learning to live in the moment – is nice for mental health. It is used to treat depression, anxiety, BPD, and more. In other words, to maintain your mental health, living in the moment is a crucial practice.
…but you love taking photos
Looking at it in this context, taking photos and recording videos looks like a destructive habit. Trying to retain memory is the definition of not living in the moment. And this is something we are very aware of. No one should be surprised to know that when you take a photo, you literally let the moment pass you by.
So does that mean photography bad?
Taking photos… mindfully
The truth is taking photos can take you out of the moment, but so can part of a balanced conscious lifestyle. Constantly taking selfies, for example, may be unhealthy because it forces you to focus on everything that’s wrong with your face. On the other hand, taking time to take photos can balance you out.
Instead of just snapping everything you see, take a few moments away from what you are doing to capture your image. In this way, the time you spend taking the photo is conscious time – you are focused on the process of taking the photo. The rest of the time you are unhampered by the anxiety of missing out on a Pulitzer Prize-winning drawing.
It also means that when you save your photo (and you should see it review photo storage service), you will never have an unmanageable load of images that you can never filter out. Instead, you will have a collection that means something to you. Every photo will have a story behind it.
And most significantly, it will in fact connect with memories that you truly experience.
