The other morning I did something super dumb: I accidentally deleted all the videos on my iPhone from the past six months.
Now, I could sit here and try to explain to you how it happened, but it would only make me sound like more of an idiot. The bottom line is this: everything I videoed from the past half year (with the exception of stuff I posted to facebook/Instagram) is gone without a trace.
Now, that might not sound like such a huge tragedy but when your kid is only three years old, six months is a huge chunk of her life to go missing. And, as my little girl grows older, there’s always this notion running through my head that if I digitally preserve the moment it will somehow make me appreciate her childhood more — well, one day anyhow.
But it’s wrong thinking like that. The truth is that a photograph isn’t even comparable to the practice of being present in the moment as it unfolds, preferably without clutching your iPhone or Android, scrambling to get that perfect shot/video clip/Boomerang.
But it still hurt. All that video footage — POOF — gone.
It got me to thinking about that old maxim though. You know the one. Whatever you may try to do in order to preserve the precious moments of your life, in the end you can’t take it with you. It’s the illusion that you can trap the moment in a jar, put it on a shelf, and one day bask in the fresh glow of it all happening again for the first time ... but really you can’t. These photos and videos we incessantly snap and record are a distraction from the truth: that the moment we’re in is all there really is.
You can’t. Take it. With you.
And, while it’s sometimes stressful being father to a three year old, these are beautiful times y’all. I will one day undoubtedly miss the trappings of having a toddler in my home: Mylar balloons with cartoon characters; Fruity Pebbles in the floor like rainbow confetti crunching beneath my feet; a cappella nursery rhymes; impromptu dance parties; stickers plastered all over the house; uneaten meals made with love; overdue diaper changes; and middle-of-the-night awakenings as she crawls into bed beside me.
But, you can’t take it with you.
In the meantime, as I move through this life among others grappling with their own ongoing personal narratives and their never-ending struggles to find meaning, love and acceptance in this world, I will do my best to appreciate these moments as they happen, instead of stockpiling memories for another day.
When you think about it like that, losing six months of videos seems a lot less tragic; in fact, it's absolutely liberating.