While much of the article focused on the unhealthy obsession of Instagrammers - "These photos, portraits of one's taste, are a twist on selfies, hopeful bids for attention in which one's aesthetic and one's ego overlap." - it ends with a pointed excoriation of the mundane shelfie, listing all the arrangements that are overdone, overwrought, booooring. The worst crime of the shelfie, it seems, is not in the obsessive taking of, but in unoriginality.
Unoriginal. Do not be that. Have a clever joke. Have a new point of view. Have an on-trend, but not cookie-cutter fashion sensibility. This is burdensome. We are repetitive creatures. Our friendships, our insights, our highs, our lows, our daily existences are full of repetition. It's what makes us human. It's what keeps us sane. And yet, I am to be filled with shame for not becoming more and more original every day.
Those records I thought were funny? A million other people would think so, too. Would take the exact same pictures. Or better ones. The stack of books, the perfect martini, the scowling baby. Done and done and done and done and done. Sure, it gets boring scrolling through a thousand variations on the same ordinary human moments created by all of us unique individuals. But, there is also something striking in our ability to be continually moved by ordinariness, to want to capture the loveliness of the moment with that cup of coffee and muffin (as if they were the only coffee and muffin we'd ever enjoyed); to express the satisfaction of a well-made bed; the glee of a perfect vintage find. We, as a whole, keep thinking these ordinary things are amazing. And, I think they are. They really are.
A co-worker noted that a 'selfie' is something you take when you are excited and alone - like if you are in Paris by yourself or some other important occasion or big feeling that only you are involved in. She said it in seriousness but we all, including her, laughed. In recognition, in embarrassment, in futility.
We cannot capture our time, our days, our beauty. They slip past at an unnerving pace. When the the cherry trees bloom in my backyard, tangling their white and pink branches together and overwhelming the whole view from the office window with radiant spring...I feel I could never see them enough, I fear I will never see them again. I reach for the camera. I want to see, I want to always see.
Almost as strongly, I want others to see what I see. To also find life good, beautiful, troubling, fleeting, along with me, along side me.
Wendell Berry wrote an essay before our internet and iPhones (ancient days) that noted tourists can be so intent on capturing the Grand Canyon or other breathtaking monument, that they did not see the Grand Canyon. They did not let it get to them beyond the lens, the shutter, the click.
We can stay on the outside of experience by always seeking its most flattering angle. Perhaps we should become more at ease with ordinary beauties unfolding just they are, uncaptured, unrecorded, and then, as is their right, to slip away, trusting that there are many more to come.
