It used to be that you’d only see family photos, the same old ones on the wall the year after you – the school pic and maybe an old Christmas snap or a family photo from ages ago. To dig into a photo album, though, you’d unleash a vault of memories and nostalgia. These days, it’s all digital with the very rare occassion of actually printing them out, except that one time when you battled through the horrible interface of the photo printing album or magnets. The home job is always low quality, and after a while, you just stop trying.
The thing is that now I have access to my digital photos on a neat little app like the rest of the world. With the very quick touch of a finger I can be scrolling down memory lane in a matter of moments. I do this so often that I don’t even think much about it. Of course I’m still taking photos, a million more than I ever would if i had to print these out, and they’re all stored quietly for me ready to go.
I hardly have any photos from before I moved to Australia in part because I’ve moved a number of times and in part because typically I haven’t been so sentimental about things in general, and photos were classed under “things” in my head. So what I have is from 2010 onward really, when I got my first iPhone which happened to coincide with my life here. The thing is that when I go scrolling back to say 2014 when I had my first child, it starts so innocently, me just looking at the images remmebering him as a newborn, as a baby, I watch a video or two and then a few more and I’m fully in memory lane of nostalgia and quite honestly a bit of saddness. It’s hard for me to look at these old images and videos without feeling a sense of loss of what was.
I for the most part besides trying on different hair styles and clothing is that I look pretty much the same. My son, both of my sons, they have changed drastically from newborn pictures up to ages 10 and 6 now. We’ve all changed internally but it’s really only them who have changed externally at such a rapid pace too. They don’t remember the moments when i show them, not when they were really young, and often not even when they were before school age, maybe a few and maybe the photos job their memories, but often they are just happy to see themselves when they were younger and to see what they were up to.
Meanwhile I’ll be sitting next to them while looking back at these images and they’ll be happy little chaps and I’m trying to hold back tears. It’s like when my grandmotehr would look at her photo albums with me and I didn’t get it. The big difference is that we hardly ever pulled them out of the cabinet and went through them. Fast forward 30 some years and I have frictionless access to my past and people from my past in images and videos readily available.
I’m just not sure if it’s all that healthy for me to always access these old images, old lives, old moments. I’ve been super aware lately how comparison is the thief of joy. I cant recall who said it, but it’s a ubiquitous saying and one that is totally apt. I’m not even talking about comparing with anyone other than myself and my own life. I have also, admittedly, been comparing what I think December weather should be based on my experience living in Greater Sydney versus what the reality is now that I’m in Tasmania, and I still have a down comforter on my bed at night. The comparison takes away the goodness of now, it takes away the option of just relaxing and enjoying what is happening right here, right now. For a long time I was deep into a specific kind of meditation called Vipassana, where you just focus on your breath and then the sensations in your body. I learned to release any revelling in the past and any forecasting into the future because they cause suffering. I learned to be totally present. I still have this in me; I’ve sat countless hours in silent meditation learning this, and the habit pattern is fully created in my mind. However, I have the ultimate distraction of my smartphone that then allows me to easily slip out right now and into the past or escape elsewhere by just pulling up an app.
Comparison is the Thief of Joy
I realise that photos is only one component of this and as I’m typing this out in order to understand how I feel about the nostalgia and sadness spike when I scroll through old photos, I’m also aware that I wasn’t feeling that until I went into the iPhotos app, I was having a pretty chill morning listening to music with my family, but I ejected myself out of the present moment. I didn’t even go looking for nostalgia; I went looking for hair inspiration from my own photo library of the different hairstyles I’ve tried over the years, but i couldn’t resist the emotional pull once I saw my little baby and that era.
I know there’s a dumbphone trend, but before I hop on that, maybe I just need to see if i can move the app so it’s not so obvious or put a timer on it to help me help myself.