Living in the Moment

I was chatting with a friend recently, he’d just shared some photos from a family vacation. Lovely snapshots of his kids playing by the water, the kind that make you pause. But something stood out: he wasn’t in any of them.

He said, “I just wanted to live in the moment with my eyes, not through a screen.”

That stuck with me. It reminded me of past conversations, some with friends, some just with myself, about the quiet tension between experiencing life and documenting it.

And the more I sit with it, the more complicated it feels. Especially now.

We’re living in a time where the act of seeing has been extended. Through cameras, phones, apps, lenses. The technology is so small, so ever-present, it rests in our palms and pockets, ready to turn a fleeting moment into a permanent record.

But what happens when everything becomes a keepsake? When every experience becomes a photo? When memory is outsourced to the cloud?

Let’s take a step back.

There was a time, before smartphones, before social feeds, when moments passed without proof. No stories to post, no reels to edit. And yet, people remembered. They talked about those moments, they wrote about them, they felt them deeply. Memory lived in the body. In the heart. In conversation.

Now? It lives on a timeline.

We’ve become archivists of our lives. Our choices, our memories, even our silence, are often shaped by a camera’s view. It’s no longer just about having an experience, it’s about keeping it. And more than that, sharing it.

But here’s the twist: the more we try to keep everything, the less space we have for anything. Attention is finite. And the cost of preserving one moment might just be the sacrifice of being fully present in it.

There’s a quote often attributed to Dostoevsky that lingers in my mind:

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”

Maybe that’s part of this too. We document because we’re afraid to forget. We record because we’re afraid it won’t matter otherwise.

But what if remembering wasn’t the point? What if feeling was?

I watched SAW recently, a film I’d had on my list for nearly five years. It lived rent-free in my mind all that time. After finally watching it, I realized… I didn’t care much for it. But strangely, I felt lighter. Like something had been cleared. And that space in my head? It made room for new thoughts.

That’s how memory works, too. Sometimes it’s about letting go. Not hoarding experiences, but living them, then moving forward.

Of course, there’s beauty in going back. Revisiting the past. Holding onto what once moved us. But it can be dangerous too, when nostalgia turns into a trap, and every new moment is unfairly compared to the “good old days.”

So what should experience mean? Something to hold onto? Or something to simply be in?

Maybe both.

Maybe there’s a middle ground, a space where we don’t capture everything, but don’t let it all go, either. A space where we learn to trust that a memory felt deeply is just as real as one recorded.

Because here’s what I’m learning:

Some of the best memories live not in photos, but in feelings.

The warmth of a walk in the rain. The laughter shared without a phone between you. The decision to just be there, even if no one else ever sees it.

I’ve had moments I wished I captured. And others I’m glad I didn’t.

But both have value. And maybe that balance, between holding on and letting go, is what maturity feels like.

Maybe meditation is exactly that: sitting with what has passed, what is present, and what might come. Feeling it. Naming it. Letting it breathe.

So, should you live with your eyes or your lens?

I don’t know. But I think I’m leaning toward this:

Let your eyes have their moment, even if the memory fades.

Because sometimes, the proof that something mattered is not in the photo, it’s in how it made you feel.

And that, I think, is enough.