On Reaching for a Camera

On a pier atop a black, shimmering ocean, a crowd wanders beneath the dark sky. A group of college friends loudly stumble down the pier searching for the next adventure. A mother stretches her neck above the crowd searching for a bathroom for her little girl. And a teenager boy jumps up on a box, dressed just like anyone else in a casual black shirt and jeans, but he brandishes a violin. The crowd continues their own adventure, but then — he begins to play.

Finally acknowledging his existence, the surrounding crowd turns to the boy and, beneath their curious glances, subtly judge this new extra who appeared in their story. But the boy doesn’t seem to notice, swaying to the music of his own creation with his head resting gently against his violin. And so the crowd gathers around him in a large semi-circle, giving his music room to carry though it didn’t need help.

The boy’s soft introduction turns into a furious performance with his hand racing to hit the next beat and chord. A subtle smile forms at the corner of his lips as his hands almost blur and his music begins a crescendo. As if in agreement, the powerful ocean roars and shimmers alongside him forming a grand single mesmerizing moment. Yet, the crowd has their phones out and jostle for the best angle trying to ensure everything fits neatly inside the frame. It seems the only person without a phone out is the young boy himself, passionately pouring out his soul into the air and swaying to his own music.

Life is a series of moments with some more exceptional than others. There’s the girl you can grab by the hand and hold onto just a little bit longer, the vivid sunset painting the ocean’s horizon at the beach, or hearty laughs with your best friends after a long day. These ideal moments inspire a suspicion that maybe your life right now is a little grander than life. It’s as if you suddenly realized the camera panning over your shoulder capturing a key moment of your life. It’s as if you are suddenly a master painter with his eyes closed summoning this scene before you onto your canvas. You find this moment lingers — as if turning back for a longing glance before drifting away. Just long enough so that you and the entire world has a chance to stop and catch its breath. This surreal moment, candid and unplanned, strikes something in your core stirring an appreciation and awareness of the world you find yourself.

But even as the happiness forms, something in the back of your mind sadly reminds you moments are fleeting. Before the scene fades, a feeling deep inside compels you to hold on, to not let this moment slip away like just another frame in the reel.

So you reach for your camera, attempting to quickly grab the moment down from the speeding reels of time as a memento to hold in your pocket. You try to propel this wondrous feeling a little further into the future with a snapshot, something you hope certifies this moment of surreal happiness happened.

But, you’re trying to press pause on a world stuck in play. Even as you snap the photo, you are faintly aware that this scene before you doesn’t fit neatly inside a frame. In the flat world on your screen, somethings are very different; somethings, unwilling to be confided, always seems to escape the 360 degrees High Definition Panoramic frame.

The most important part of the scene in front of you can never be recorded by a camera. For life isn’t a series of frames strewn together meant to be placed over a fireplace or backed up on Google Drive. The goal isn’t to continuously pile up memories and mementos to prove to some higher power in the afterlife that, yes, you did indeed live a good life. It’s a series of visceral moments that you uniquely experience and contribute to, not a wholesale vicarious movie.

The world is perpetually trying to fit together the many pieces of its puzzle and you are an active participant grabbing some of the pieces off the floor and trying to fit it all together. For the world in front of your eyes is one you can still affect; one with a future still undetermined.

Even as you put up the camera and admire the pixels neatly subdivided in a grid, the messy landscape before you is subtly beckoning for your attention and demanding your answer to the most important question: what will you do next? There’s no director to turn to, no lines to memorize, or a writer to scold, but yet the world demands your performance, your continuous improvisation. However much you wish you were the observer, someone cozy in a recliner chair just waiting for the next joke, you are on the screen and the spotlight is stuck in your direction — so ready set, and action!