Want To Know What Someone Fears Losing? Watch What They Photograph
What's most important in YOUR life?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and as cliché as the saying is, I think it to be true. Sometimes you can capture in a picture what you can’t express in words. A loving stare, vacations, birthdays, and holidays: all moments in time we want to remember. But what does your camera roll say about you?
I recently came upon a quote from an unknown source:
"If you want to learn what someone fears losing, watch what they photograph."
It really hit a nerve for me, in a good way. I never looked at life that way, and it made me go through the photo gallery on my phone and see what I mostly take pictures of.
It turns out, it’s my son, my husband, and selfies where I’ve touched up parts of myself I’m uncomfortable with the world seeing, in that order.
Photo courtesy of the author
Of course I’m worried about losing my son or husband.
I think about it far too often; car accidents, work accidents, house accidents. My son recently fell off a chair in my home and hit his head pretty hard. The panic I felt was something I never experienced before. In his short five years, he’s only fallen a handful of times, and very lightly at that. This was a major hit, with the left side of his face red and bruising.
The first thing that popped into my head was the story of actress Natasha Richardson, who had banged her head on a ski trip, refused medical care because she thought she was fine, then died hours later from the head trauma. Luckily, aside from a few black and blues, he was perfectly healthy.
It’s obvious I love my son, but it amazed me just how many pictures I had taken of him. I just looked at how many gigs I’ve used on his pictures since birth: 68 gigabytes. That’s A LOT of pictures and videos, but I never want to miss a moment, or forget one.
Most of us have the luxury of smartphones with pretty decent cameras in them. Instead of lugging around heavy equipment to get the perfect shot, it’s all too easy to grab a phone, snap away, and the moment is captured and done.
Now, what if you look at your pictures and all you see are selfies?
Are you trying to capture your youth? Your beauty? It doesn’t always mean that you have narcissistic tendencies. It could just be that you want to remember yourself a certain way, whether it be because of the way you look or securing a memory during a happy time in your life.
No matter the reason, looking through the photos you take (or the photos someone else takes) can be a good indicator of what’s important in your life or theirs.
Think of it like a free therapy session: If you see a picture of a friend, remember the moment that picture was taken. See a picture of food from a family gathering? What made you take that picture? Did you want to remember the gathering or your maybe your mother's cooking that you may miss?
Here’s the thing: No matter what you have in your gallery, you took those pictures for a reason.
You took those photos because you love the subjects in them.
They're there for you to look at when you may be sad or missing someone, and for that, a picture is worth way more than a thousand words, it’s worth EVERYTHING!