Milestones and Memories

My daughter is celebrating her 18th birthday today. It’s a significant milestone in our family as she is the last of the kiddos to reach legal voting age (sadly for her just days after an election).

As she prepared to head out for school this morning, she paused to ask me, “Aren’t you going to take your picture? You always ask for one.”

She’s absolutely right! I one hundred percent want pictures of important moments in my household. I tell myself it’s because one day I want to be able to remember all of the detail.

Turns out, however, there is research to suggest that we remember more detail about a moment when we are not fumbling with the angle of our camera or moving our subjects around to find just the right light.

In fact, the act of recording something actually hinders our ability to remember it. Angela Duckworth, PhD, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance and a co-founder of Character Lab, explains it here. (Character Lab’s Tip of the Week is a fun weekly email to subscribe to if you are interested in how to support young people in ways of “thinking, acting, and feeling that benefit others as well as ourselves”).

We’ve all shared a similar experience as Duckworth’s.

I once filmed the entirety of my daughter’s viola concert, balancing the phone on the back of the seat in front of me, trying not to miss a thing. But what I missed, in the end, was the experience itself.

We can also all benefit from her advice.

Don’t live life through the screen of your cell phone.

Do ask yourself, the next time you reach for your phone to capture the moment, whether doing so will distract you from the moment itself.

I think I’ll show some faith in my ability to remember a moment - through my own lens - and sing happy birthday to my daughter without my camera in hand tonight .

It might just be the highest resolution birthday picture I take.

In love and milestones, Molly