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A few were shaken, a couple blurred, one completely blacked out, and one shot on the head. Although it sounds like a crime scene, this is how some of the photos in my high school tour album looked like. As I flipped through the album, I couldn't help but wonder how I managed to cover an entire tour in just 32 pictures. Back then, the analog cameras needed a roll of photographic film to capture images. A strip of film could typically hold 36 images. That meant I could make just 36 carefully planned memories, memories that I would keep going back to and let the world see. With the analog camera that I used, I had no way of knowing what the pictures looked like until I got the negatives developed in a lab. However, nothing could match the thrill of seeing the developed and printed photos for the first time. So precious were those 36 shots that every one of it would find a place in the album, even the unintentional and bad ones. Things are different today. We don't make an effort to print the pictures in the first place. We would take a thousand shots at the same scene just to pick one good profile picture in the end. The rest becomes digital junk, waiting for years to be cleaned up or be sent to the cloud.
The 32 photos in my album were not the best in quality or photography, but were nevertheless very important. It made me ask myself "what if I had just 32 shots at life?"
If those 32 shots were to represent my life events, what would I pick and what would I leave? Along with graduations, weddings, babies, and parties will I dare to count my failures, broken relationships, and embarrassments? Will I let the world see me as a composition of events that occurred naturally? Or would I, as with the digital camera, manipulate the events so my life looks picture perfect? Would I hide some pictures behind another for no one to see? Would I hate to show the real me without those filters? Would I try hard to make some fancy life events? Would I travel far and wide only to see the world through the eyes of a camera? Would I be lost in the randomness of it all, that I won't know when it happened?
I quickly snapped out of the train of questions and something became evident. The more shots I had, the larger my world grew; the larger my world, the lesser the time I had; the lesser the time, the faster I ran; the faster I run, the more tired I became; the more tired I become, the lesser I enjoy. I don't want unlimited, it's no fun. Unlimited channels is confusing, unlimited drinks is embarrassing, unlimited data is addicting, unlimited options is spoiling. I wish everything was rationed, I would probably be making careful and sensible use of it all. But I am going to try and pretend that I only have 32 shots at life. My world may become smaller, but it sure would be one happy little place!
About the Author:
Arthini is a guest author at Pixilex. Creativity of all forms is her passion. This includes writing, art and crafts among others.
About Pixilex:
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