After the Fact and Not Before or During

We just went to a little blueberry farm and ate blueberries right off the bush. It was a sweet moment of simplicity and deliciousness.

While standing there amid the enormous blueberry bushes, I briefly wondered about taking a picture, but then I was so thankful I forgot my phone.

I remember the mental discipline that we live life first and post about it later for friends to enjoy. We don't craft experiences, set up the perfect shots, or imagine what might look good online. More importantly, we don't need cameras or words to legitimize whether our experience was good or even happening at all. There's a great risk with posting on the internet (and living your life there) that your actual experience is always mediated through a lens of how it will appear online. The experience of interacting about your experience on social media becomes the experience instead of the real experience.

What?? Yes.

What can we do to keep our lives immediate and authentic? I like thinking about what was great about the day after the fact and not beforehand or during. You have to stay present and unlayered about it; you aren't viewing it through a lens or narrating it by a tweet or status update.

I remember the perfectly ripe, nearly bursting blueberry. The time to enjoy it was right then, standing in the dusty field, hidden among the bushes, gobbling up the gift. I could think about what it meant later, after I had my fill with my family.