I Almost Missed the Sunset

I'm borrowing the title to one of Bill Gaither's books because I think it is very appropriate for my thoughts today...


I spent the morning looking every now and then at a picture of some friends of mine on a social networking site. I am going to protect their names, but please trust me when I tell you that anyone who has lived anywhere in the free world (and are older than 30) would probably know who at least two of these people are, by voice if not by sight. But it doesn’t really matter who they are or even that a couple of them are famous singers – they could be any group of friends gathered around a piano. They are just a-singing and having what appears to be a mighty good time. Knowing them, I am sure they were -- and it made me smile. Made me wish I could have been there.

But my smile must have faded a touch when I looked into the picture a little further. You see, two of these men were holding their cell phones, looking for all the world as though they were taping the event. I guess it just seemed a little sad to me because if so, THEY WERE MISSING MUCH OF THIS WONDERFUL MOMENT THEY WERE ACTUALLY IN!!! Is it wrong of me, then, to feel a little frustration amidst my warm feelings?

And we all do this. At family reunions and weddings and birthdays (even funerals, for some folks, but that seems pretty over the top to me). In such situations, the minutes in which we are living are much too valuable, we feel, to be wasted on the 60 seconds they comprise. We want them to stretch longer and to stay crisper than the flawed replay that we know our fading memories would give them in the subsequent months and years.

So we document our moments. For absent friends or posterity or our future selves. And we do it more and more as the tools to do it become more widespread. And we accept, often without thinking about it, the bargain: that we are trading a future crisp memory for not giving 100% of ourselves to the unforgiving present.

I know this post must be giving a lot of people who know me fits of laughter -- I have been a “news girl” all my working life and have paid quite a few bills over the years by capturing important moments on film, video, audio or (when none of the above were handy) random scraps of available paper. But in those situations I was on the job, standing outside of other people’s experiences; they usually weren’t mine.

I am not trying to be a hypocrite here. I myspace, facebook, tweet and blog with the best of them. And I do enjoy the glimpses into others’ lives afforded by the new technologies.

This techno-culture need to share our significant (or even not so significant – I refer you to most twitter posts) experiences with everyone makes us live and give a little less to the actual moment, don’t you think?

And what do you think? I welcome your comments or emails…