This really bothers me, and I'll explain why. I see fireworks explode in the sky and so many people's first reaction is to raise their cell phone. I see a beautiful dish on the table and its smell is the last thing to be noticed, because first it has to be photographed. A beautiful sunset is no longer a reason for silence, it’s a reason to choose the best angle.
And what hurts me most about all this is not the gesture itself. It's realizing how much life is slipping through your fingers while this happens.
Life becomes dry when it is lived second-hand
When everything first passes through the camera and only then, perhaps, is felt, the experience loses all its strength. The moment stops being yours and becomes a draft to show someone. And the problem is that this someone, most of the time, isn't even people who really matter in your life. It's a distant audience, people who won't call you on a bad day, but who you want so much to see your good day.
This dries out anything inside. Because a good feeling that is not felt completely, is a feeling that is lost, even if the video is saved forever.
Because this outrages me so much
Because it hurts to see people exchange feelings for showing. Swap the real chill of a moment for the anxiety of knowing how many people reacted to it afterwards. No one should need someone else's approval to confirm that a food was good, that a moment was beautiful, that life, right there, at that moment, was worth it.
And the saddest thing is that this has become so normalized that today it seems strange who simply lives without documenting it. As if feeling without showing wasn't enough.
What is lost when you live like this
Attention is divided, because part of it is always reserved for thinking about how you are going to show it later.
The feeling of value starts to depend on other people's mood, on how many comments or likes something receives.
It becomes difficult to know what you really like and what only seems pretty for show.
Emotional energy is spent maintaining an image, energy that is needed more to truly live.
The advice is simple: create distance to feel again
It's not about stopping posting, it's about stopping needing it. Eating without taking photos first. Watch the fireworks with both hands free and your neck turned to the sky, not the screen. Letting a good moment happen just for you, without having to tell anyone, because it was enough for being good, and that should be enough.
Get away from it all for a bit. You will notice that the sensations come back stronger when they are not filtered by an audience. The smell tastes better, the color of the sky becomes more vivid, the joy lasts longer inside the chest instead of dissolving as soon as the like appears.
Life shouldn't be dry like this
No one should need to lend their happiness to strangers to truly feel it. Life is too short to be lived thinking about who is watching, and it is too rich to be reduced to a nine by sixteen square.
Sit down first. Live first. If you still want to show it later, show it. But never the other way around, because that way, life becomes dry, and life doesn't deserve that.