Enjoying the Moment Even Without the Pictures

There was a mama dolphin and her baby swimming right in front of us.

When we first arrived in Hilton Head, we walked down to the dock at Harbor Town and were rewarded with a mama dolphin swimming with her calf. They were side-by-side and super close to us. Everyone around was ooohing and ahhing. I snapped and snapped, but I couldn’t get the shot. They would disappear almost as soon as they appeared. It was beautiful. You just have to take my word on it.

The next day when we arrived at the beach, there were two dolphins swimming, not a hundred yards from us.

These people are pointing at the two dolphins close by.

I grabbed my camera again, and again, was unsuccessful at capturing them on film. It struck me, after a few tries that I was missing the wonder of it by trying to take a picture. This was a huge revelation.

I like to think of dolphins as the dogs of the ocean. People are fascinated by them and they seem to share the same fascination with us. There are stories of them saving people at sea after they fall overboard or are shipwrecked. People will pay hundreds of dollars for the chance to swim with them. Yet, here they were in all of their glory, swimming in the wild.

Adults and children alike, couldn’t take their eyes of them. When I gave up trying to “get the photo,” I too, was mesmerized by their close presence. They swam close by for a long time among the diving pelicans, before they finally swam away.

I pondered the whole, “photo-op idea,” for a good, long while after that. I love a good photo. I especially love candid shots and nature shots and I surround myself with many of both. But, sometimes I think we take, “taking pictures” way too far.

If we have to stop having fun on our trip every few hours to post that fun to Instagram or Facebook, then we might be taking photos to the extreme. That’s a regular conversation, I have with my teen daughter. Everyone else is having so much fun. It’s all over Instagram. My reply is always the same. If they were having THAT much fun, they wouldn’t have time to put it on Instagram. Trust me on this one.

Last summer, my kids, my sister and her kids and my mom, visited this really cool place called Noah’s Ark. They have a bear, a tiger and a lion all living in peace together. They are friends. It was a fabulous thing to see. I simply couldn’t get a good picture. Does that make it any less awesome?

I also have a vivid memory of this woman screaming at her kids and their friends about sitting still and smiling for a photo. I cringed at her tone and whispered to my sister, “I wonder what they will remember from this trip.”

My point is, we have become a heavily visual culture. Newspapers have gone by the wayside. They have tried to put the Bible on video. We don’t want to read an e-mail over five sentences long. We are obsessed with taking pictures. Every man, woman and child carries around a phone with a camera.

While there’s no harm in that on its face, I think it’s important to remember that life is really about our journey and our experiences. Pictures are great, but sometimes the memories are just as good without them, like those dolphins. When I was growing up, film was expensive. Mom took a lot of pictures, but not hundreds and hundreds. And you know what? My childhood memories are just as great.

We should strive to enjoy this moment, this day, whether or not we have the pictures to prove it was fun. What do you think?

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂