Thursday, March 28 2024

Taking photos or shooting videos frantically can spoil – rather than
capture – the magic of the moments we live and ruin the memories that would
have be imprinted in our memory. Complying with the anxiety of
immortalizing or instantly sharing an experience – instead of observing,
contemplating, “savoring” the reality we live – we risk, somehow, wasting
the beauty of the present.

Furthermore, worrying too much about the “pose to make” at the time of
shooting, instead of focusing on the people we are with and what surrounds
us, can decrease the degree of participation in the situation in which we
find ourselves, and therefore reduce the pleasure of the memory.

To reveal all this is a study coordinated by Maryanne Garry, professor of
Psychology at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

If we want good memories, in short, the mania for selfies and uncontrolled
sharing on Social must be kept at bay.

Below, some suggestions to enjoy the present more and preserve the beauty
of memories…



1. Fix your eyes on reality, rather than on a screen

When we do something pleasant, new, and particular – but even in moments of
normal routine – we can feel the desire to enclose reality in the memory of a mobile phone, almost
as if we wanted to make the moment we are living last forever.

Certainly it is nice to keep and relook at videos and photos, because they
allow us to dive into the past. It is a pleasure to review the first steps
of a child who is now an adolescent, or much more simply “to return,” with
our mind, to a concert we saw thanks to short films shot with a mobile
phone.

Problems arise when, instead of reserving videos or photos of only marginal
spaces, they “invade” our moments.

Here, then, we may be more concerned about capturing the baby’s first steps
instead of watching him move proudly and happily towards us; or we spend
the whole time of a concert with the phone in our hands, instead of dancing
and singing with those we have near us…

Therefore, our first suggestion is: look around, observe, and enjoy the moment. If you are
tempted to take out the phone to snap a photo, stop. Set your eyes on the
reality, appreciate the beauty of what you are experiencing and only then,
if you do, give yourself the chance to remember it in the future with a
video or photo.

First of all, reality must be lived, not filmed.


2. Photo memory yes, but with measure: better few but good

When we go to a party, on a trip, or participate in an event, it happens
that we spend most of the time with our phone glued to our hands. We become
photographers or serial cameramen: we take photos of everything, of
everyone, with everyone. In particular, the selfies will rain down –
readily shared on social media. We take so many photos that we can set up
an exhibition. We spend so much energy looking for the best shot, but we
don’t realize that this “effort” will cause us stress, just enough to
prevent us from “savoring the moment.”

We are anxious to capture everything. We believe that in this way we will
“remember better”: in fact, the opposite will happen, because giving too
much attention to the shots, leads us to focus less on what we are
experiencing.

Better one click less and one more word with the person next to us.

Our advice then is: photos and videos, yes, but not so many. Better few but
good quality photos.

A single photo or a well-made video will be enough to plunge us, in an
instant, with the mind and the heart, back into a whole day.



3. Share the moment with whoever is next to you, then with those
who are distant

Worrying excessively about sharing photos or videos on social media with
those who are far away from us can lead us to not live real life fully with
who we have next to us. It is a paradox, yet it may happen.

Have you ever seen 4, 6, or 8 people around a table, all in silence, with a
cell phone in hand? What memory can you have of an evening like this?

Maybe

, the Facebook profile has been updated, but the relationship with
those next to us has not been cared for.

Our advice, then, is to keep your fingers intertwined if you remain on
social media for more than a minute when you have a person near you, in the
flesh, or are walking through a park in bloom …

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