I Photograph Everything And Remember None Of It

There are four thousand pictures on your phone and you cannot describe a single evening.

You noticed it looking for something last week. Scrolling back, and there was a whole run of them from a Sunday in March, and you could not remember the day at all.

Not the room. Not what anybody said. Nothing, except that you had clearly been there and had taken eleven photographs of it.

And it sat oddly, because there is more evidence of that Sunday than of any Sunday in your childhood, and you can describe about six of those in detail.

Here is what I think is going on, and it is not a moral failing about phones.

Taking a picture and looking at something are two different activities and they cannot happen at the same time. Photographing requires you to think about the frame, the light, whether somebody blinked. Looking requires none of that and produces something different.

You have been doing one of them and getting the results of one of them.

Lest thou forget the things thine eyes have seen

There is an instruction in Deuteronomy about remembering that is precise about where memory comes from.

Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life. (Deuteronomy 4:9, King James Version)

The things which thine eyes have seen. That is the source, and it is named specifically.

Not the things recorded. Not the things documented. What the eyes actually looked at, which then goes into the heart and stays there.

You are a man who can put a thing down for twenty minutes, and a picture taken has never once been the same event as an evening seen. Deuteronomy 4:9 makes the seeing the thing that memory comes from, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can put that in front of a man without any lecture about anything.

And notice the phrase depart from thy heart.

The memory is meant to live in a person rather than in a record. The verse is worried about it leaving somebody's interior, and no external record can prevent that, because a record is not in the heart.

You have been building the wrong kind of storage, and four thousand images have never once been able to sit where a memory sits. The Spirit of God is the one who names a difference between two things a man has been treating as one, and it is written in Deuteronomy 4 that the danger is a thing departing from the heart.

And there is the instruction at the front: take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently.

That is effort language and it is aimed at attention rather than at documentation. Diligently means with care, on purpose, as a task.

You are able to give something the effort you have been giving the recording, and attention paid on purpose has never once produced less than a camera. It is written to keep thy soul diligently lest thou forget, and the Holy Spirit is the one who redirects an effort that was already being made.

What a picture cannot hold

Now the honest part, because I am not going to tell you the pictures are worthless.

They are not. They are genuinely good and your children will want them and there is nothing wrong with a photograph.

But a photograph holds what a room looked like, and what you have been missing is what the room was like, and those are two different objects.

You have been storing one thing and needing another, and an accurate picture has never once been able to carry what an evening felt like. The Spirit of God is the one who distinguishes two kinds of keeping, and Deuteronomy 4:9 puts the things seen into the heart rather than into a record.

And here is what happens in the eleven seconds a photograph costs.

A man is outside the moment for the whole of it. Arranging, checking, deciding whether to take another. Everybody in the room is aware of being photographed, which changes what they are doing.

The moment you were trying to keep stopped happening the second you started keeping it.

You are able to leave a moment intact by not touching it, and eleven seconds of not reaching for anything have never once cost a household a thing. It is written in Deuteronomy 4 that the eyes see and the heart keeps, and the Holy Spirit is the one at work in a man's hands staying still.

And your children remember things you never photographed. Ask them.

They will name evenings there is no record of at all, and they will not name the ones with eleven photographs from a Sunday in March.

You have been keeping a record that nobody consults, and a household's own memory has never once run on anybody's camera roll. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a man what his own family actually carries, and Scripture puts the whole matter in the heart.

Take none tonight

Here is the instruction and it is one evening rather than a change of habit.

Take no pictures at all tonight. And look at one moment for the whole of it instead.

Not fewer. None. For twenty minutes, nothing gets recorded by anybody, and specifically not by you.

You are able to record nothing for twenty minutes, and an undocumented evening has never once been an evening that did not happen. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in something nobody kept, and Deuteronomy 4:9 puts the keeping in a soul rather than in a device.

And the second half is the one that does the work: look at one moment for the whole of it.

Pick a moment while it is happening, and look at it until it finishes. Do not think about anything. Do not compose it. Just watch the thing all the way through, which takes about eleven seconds and which is exactly what a photograph costs.

You have the same eleven seconds available for either job, and eleven seconds of looking have never once produced less than eleven seconds of arranging. The Spirit of God is the one at work in something looked at rather than captured, and it is written that the things which thine eyes have seen are the ones that stay.

And expect it to feel like losing something, because it will.

There is a small anxiety in not taking the picture, and it is the feeling of a moment going unkept. It is not going unkept. It is going into the only place that Deuteronomy names.

You are able to let something go into your heart instead of onto a phone, and a moment nobody photographed has never once been a moment that was lost. It is written in Deuteronomy 4 that the danger is departing from the heart, and the Spirit of God is the one at work in a man who looked instead.