"and I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter all this time... when there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me and this place. It's so easy to get stuck, you just get caught up in being something, being special, or cool, or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do."
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I found this on Mae's wall last year when I visited her and we worked on some song lyrics she was writing. I took a phone-camera photo of it and it kind of just remained there till I found it while going through all my photos this afternoon, so I thought I'd share it here to remind both myself and anyone who needs it.
I think it's important to realise all the love we have around us, know that there are people who love us and remember that no matter what. I almost talked myself out of documenting life because I pondering on how it reduced the life we live into just that physical leftover, be it a photo or piece of writing; which I thought was a pity for such wholeness to be diminished. I know some people do it out of a fear of fading into oblivion, but really, the universe stretches out endlessly both in terms of space and the concept of time, that it isn't only an inevitability, but perhaps being afraid of 'not being remembered' is the wrong thing to be thinking about.
However, I was going through my archive of photos a few days ago in search for the best ones to put together some portfolio of sort, and coming across photographs and videos of friends during our gatherings (many which are so much less than perfectly composed that I will never share them publicly) and I just sat there and went through each and every one of them, watched every video. And it just brought so much joy back to me, remembering those times that we had and the love we have for each other like family. And it was then that I realise that I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop documenting even if I wanted to.
I was telling Wenkai about this because I share as much of myself as I can with him even in the ways that we may be different, and he said, 'Of course you shouldn't stop. One should never stop documenting for it is what makes us human.' I don't know if it is what makes us human, but I do know that I live better when I am consciously in search for things in the present to write or photograph. I don't think I'll even know how to stop.
As a side note, I am pretty sure that a lot of this thinking arose from the modern art module I took in my second year of university. I was entirely fascinated by the way it could turned all my thinking upside down and still have the world make (even more) sense, but after the module ended and I realised that I could never again think according to conventional formulas, I wondered if it ruined me. Then I realised that I could not, never can I allow anything to ruin me -or rather put the blame on something else that has caused me to grow. Because of that, I have learnt all the more and it will be up to me to make the best use of it.
x
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