"Making" memories

Is it possible to suffocate in computer files? I am starting to wonder...I am currently being overrun by pictures of my own graduation. I'm not even sure how many pictures I currently have. They keep pouring in, more quickly than I can count.

I think it would be safe to call graduation a photo frenzy. When you have a class picture and mothers are bobbing up and down trying to take a picture over the mothers in front of them, swarming around the legs of the professional photographer's ladder, jockeying for the best position, and waving frantically so that their child, at least, will be smiling into the camera, I think that qualifies as a frenzy.

It's not just mothers, of course. In between walking across a stage and grabbing a piece of paper with their name on it, graduates are busing snatching friends out of the crowd and asking random strangers, "Will you take a picture of us?"

Looking back over the dozen identical friend-shots in my pictures, I find myself wondering why.

The same thing is true to a lesser degree at any memorable event--a birthday, a wedding, a trip, a "first" or a "last." Especially a "last."

We have a sense of urgency, as if without the picture, the friendship isn't real. As if all the memories we've shared will vanish unless they are captured on film.

A photo is essentially a little square of laminated cardboard with a blur of colors on it. The heart of a friendship cannot be squashed between the glass and backing of a frame. When we look back at a photo, it isn't the same as the real thing. A photo may capture a rare smile--pure and free of posing, or the unconscious tilting of two heads toward each other. But even that is just a glimpse of what the friendship means.

At graduation, it is as if we fear the friendships, the memories, never really existed except in our memory. We take precautions just in case we don't go on to make new memories. We realize, just for a moment, how temporal and ethereal our lives and interactions really are.

And this photo frenzy says something about our desire to validate our lives. It is a desire to say "I mattered." Or "I was important to the people around me." In many ways, I think it shows our own insecurity about who we are and what others think of us. We don't trust reality to reinforce our identity; we need the little pieces of thin cardboard that we can hold up and say, "See!"

I took as many photos as anyone else. I share the insecurity, the desire for validation, the sense of temporality. And I don't think it is entirely a bad thing. For one, it makes me think about the effort that goes into maintaining friendship. It also makes me value the friendships I am lucky enough to have. And it reminds me that worth, value, is so fleeting when it is based on the things of this world.

I have been reading the book "Searching for God Knows What" by Donald Miller, the author of "Blue Like Jazz." One of his central ideas is what he calls the "Lifeboat Theory." He says:

"If people are in a lifeboat, the reason they feel passionately about being a good person and all is because if they aren't, they are going to be thrown overboard...These wants we have, like wanting to be right, wanting to be good, wanting to be perceived as humble, wanting to be important to people and wanting to be loved, feel perilous, as though by not getting them something terrible is going to happen..."

Even though taking photographs at a graduation ceremony is simple, harmless, and can be very meaningful to look back on, it also reflects just a hint of that same needy feeling: a sort of grappling for validation. Miller says it well a few pages later:

"What if when we are with God, we feel that we have glory, we feel His love for us and know, in a way infinitely more satisfying than a parent's love or a lover's love, that we matter?...So many times...I feel like I am in a lifeboat trying to get other people to say I am important and valued, and even when they do, it feels as though their opinion isn't strong enough to give me the feeling I need, the feeling that quit at the Fall."

I love looking through my graduation pictures and seeing the subtle emotions they capture. But even more than that, I love looking at them and thinking about the next time I will see my friends face to face.

Because while this fractured validation has meaning, it is nothing compared to face-to-face validation, just as earthly validation is nothing compared to that found in relationship with the Creator of meaning and value.