Are We Recording Life Instead of Living It?
The curtain rose and the kids filed onto the stage, scanning the crowd. They weren’t just looking for applause. They were looking for us, their anchors, their people. But instead of meeting our faces, they met a wall of glowing rectangles. Screens hovered above the audience, parents peering through phones instead of looking directly at their children.
I know because I was one of them. Phone raised, recording every note. And then I looked up. My child’s eyes found mine, but instead of seeing me, they saw a device. In my effort to hold on to the memory, I wasn’t actually part of it.
That moment jolted me. Because once I noticed it there, I began to see it everywhere.
The Sea of Screens
At weddings, as vows are spoken, phones rise like a tide. At concerts, the crowd waves cameras instead of hands. At dinners, friends lean back, framing their plates before ever taking a bite. Even in quiet places, hikes, sunsets, the edge of the ocean, people pause to capture instead of simply noticing.
I’m one of those people too. And maybe you are as well.
We tell ourselves we’re preserving moments. But what we’re really doing is outsourcing our attention. We’re so busy collecting proof of an experience that we miss the experience itself.
The Cost of Scattered Attention
Attention is not an infinite resource. Neuroscience tells us every shift, every glance toward a screen, comes with a cost. The brain takes time to reorient, which means the more we split our focus, the less deeply we encode memory.
So when we put a screen between us and life, something slips away. We miss the goosebumps during the crescendo of a song. The warmth of a shared glance. The grounding sensation of just being fully in the place we are.
And it’s not only what we miss within ourselves. It’s what others lose from us. A child looking out from the stage doesn’t see our encouragement, they see a phone. A partner at dinner doesn’t feel our presence, they feel our attention drifting toward documentation. Focus becomes fractured, and with it, connection.
Why It Matters
Focus isn’t just a skill. It’s a form of love. To give someone your full attention is to say: you matter more than anything else right now. That can’t be conveyed through a recording. It can only be felt in real time.
When we default to our phones, we dilute that signal. We replace presence with proof. But what the people in our lives want most isn’t proof, they want us.
A Gentle Shift
The answer isn’t to abandon photos. Images hold meaning, they become artifacts of our stories. But maybe the practice is restraint.
Snap a picture, capture a snippet, then put the phone down and return to being present.
We can also experiment with tiny pauses:
- Make eye contact before you raise the camera.
- Take in the scene with your senses before you frame it.
- Let at least one moment pass unrecorded.
These simple acts reclaim our focus, not just for others, but for ourselves.
The Real Keepsake
When I think back to that concert, I don’t want to remember the shaky video in my phone. I want to remember my child’s face, the wobble in their voice, the way the whole room held its breath for them. Those details can’t be stored on a device. They live only in memory, in presence.
And presence is what endures.
Because at the end of the day, no recording matters more than the focus we bring to the people right in front of us. That is what roots us. That is what lasts.
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