My eldest son’s graduation was this past Friday…from preschool. Not that there was a ton of pomp and circumstance, but there was a ceremony (in case you are wondering, he graduated magna cum laude – I’m one proud daddy!). Parents were out in force with their cameras and camcorders – myself included.
My son posed an interesting dilemma for my wife and me. As the kids were asked to sit in a circle, he asked my wife and I to sit beside him. For a few moments I gave pause – I had been planning to stand back and record the ceremony! After all, this was his first graduation.
Then I realized that, instead of observing the ceremony through my camcorder lens – my son was asking us to experience this with him. I turned the camcorder off, sat down beside him, and just soaked up the experience with him and my wife.
Too often we are trying to capture that perfect moment in a picture or a camcorder. For what purpose? To experience it again later when we never fully experienced it the first time? There’s a place for pictures and recording videos to be sure, but we should never lose sight of the fact that life is best experienced as it is. If part of our attention is being diverted to recording an experience…indeed, we might be very frustrated in our efforts to get that perfect picture…we miss out on the full experience of that moment.
So, be aware when your efforts to capture the moment are detracting from your experience of the moment. It’s okay sometimes to just turn the camera and camcorder off.