Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
I take a lot of photos.
Every time I see something potentially memorable, something that reminds me of someone, something amusing, strange, or beautiful, I take a photo of it. I take photos of road signs, billboard advertisements, and bits of paper to remind myself of things. I take screen-shots of recipes, social media posts, and funny pictures on the internet that I am always certain I will refer back to (I don’t). I got my first camera years before the transition to digital photography; before they developed that little display screen that let you check your photo for blurriness or thumbs. When I grew up, your best chance for a clear shot was to take at least two pictures and hope that one of them turned out. This is the only explanation I can come up with for why to this day, despite the technological magic of smartphones and the Cloud, I still take two or three pictures of everything. You know, to make sure they come out.
I take a lot of photos aspirationally. I take photos because I’m sure that one day I will want to remember whatever it is that I’m looking at. I take a lot of photos because technology guarantees almost limitless space to store them and constant searchable access (I recently learned, for instance, that I can type “dog” into my Cloud app and look at just photos of our dogs from the past decade).
I take a lot of photos but I rarely look at them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have Europe 2016 photos at my fingertips, but I only seem to scroll through when I want to find one specific place or memory if it comes up in a conversation. “Oh, you’re travelling to Porto? Hold on, I may have a few photos here…” I don’t seem to do what I always tell myself I will; I never take the time to actually look through my own photos.
In addition to the five shoeboxes filled with developed childhood photos and their associated negatives (I may be losing the younger generation here), I also have thousands of photos stored digitally; on old pre-Cloud computers, memory sticks, external harddrives, and a small handful of my old cell phones. I have had three smartphones since my “ancient” 2009 Blackberry Bold. As a result, I have access to thousands of pictures spanning the better part of a decade. Yet, for some reason, in all these years I have probably only used about two of them as phone background pictures. I have no idea why but I almost never change them. I have such an incredible number of images to choose from that I’m literally spoiled for choice. Maybe that’s it; maybe having too much to choose from is one of the reasons I’ve settled for the default blue background more times than I’d care to admit.
Before this week if you had asked me what my lock screen photo was, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It’s an image that has been there for so long that my brain no longer bothers to register it. So what is it doing there? The photo of the Eiffel Tower I currently have (I just checked) is lovely; it was taken on my first trip to Paris, the trip I took with my best friend, the trip where I met my husband. If I take the time to look, this picture is loaded with happy memories. But if I no longer see it, if I don’t take the time, what purpose is it serving?
This week I decided to change things up so I did something I haven’t done in a long time: I looked through my old pictures. All of them. It took me so long that I had to break it up into manageable chunks. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for but I knew that I needed two photos, one for my lock screen and one for my background. As I was scrolling I came up with some criteria: the photos must be associated with a specific happy memory or place and they must feature people that I know and/or love. While a Swiss landscape would be beautiful, I figured that real people and real faces would stir my subconscious a little better than a mountain range, no matter how idyllic. My goal this week was to disrupt the automatic cycle of picking up my phone, typing in my passcode, clicking on an app, and repeating. I wanted to add a smile, a bit of serotonin and maybe even a giggle. I wanted to make a small adjustment to increase my daily happiness. And that’s what I did.
I picked this photo of Tyler and Lou Lou the dog because it makes me laugh. It may not be immediately obvious but this is not actually the picture I meant to take. This little pup is almost 15 years old and, as a result of her advanced age, she is stiff, rickety, clueless, and almost completely deaf. One day, Tyler picked Lou Lou up and put her on his lap. This may not sound remarkable – after all, there are many photos of Tyler and Lou next to each other – but this is actually a fairly unusual tableau. Because of her age and *cough* incontinence, she is almost invariably covered in a significant quantity of her own pee. I love the little wet fluffball but Tyler naturally doesn’t enjoy being peed on. So when he got her on his lap I needed photographic proof. This is one of a series of five photos I took in an attempt to get a nice picture of the two of them. I chose this one because as soon as I turned my camera towards the pair, Lou Lou began the biggest yawn I’ve ever seen. For some reason, however, when I look at this picture I don’t hear a dog yawning. I hear a dog screaming and it makes me burst into laughter. When I look at this photo I remember the hilarity that ensued as I tried to capture a lovely moment and I smile. Every time.
In 2019, Tyler and I took his then fifteen-year-old sister to Europe. She had been saving for a number of years and we made her a deal: cobble the money together for your flight and we’ll take you. My husband and I have travelled many places together – we met on a trip to France – and every time we come home I always realize the same thing: we take hundreds of pictures but of all of them, maybe 8 of them are of us. The year we met, we were each one of twelve Canadian students on a study tour in Europe. Most of us didn’t know each other so we were essentially travelling alone together. A thought occurred to me: we will all be taking photos, but who will be capturing us? One day, when we were out on a bus tour and pulled over to look at a field of poppies, I saw Tyler bending over to take a close-up. I wanted him to have a candid photo of himself, so I took a picture of the moment. Unfortunately, to my friend it looked like I was taking a picture of his backside, so she took a picture of me taking a picture of him. It became a running joke over the course of the trip and I absolutely treasure both photos. But despite this, the fact remains: when we travel together we don’t keep a great record of us, so having my sister-in-law there was actually perfect. We took photos of her enjoying herself and she took photos of us. It’s not obvious, but this photo was actually taken from pretty far away. Tyler and I were talking to each other while his sister was exploring the area. We didn’t know at the time that she had captured this moment (and many more like it over the course of two weeks) and I love looking at it. It is a photo that I never would have thought to ask for, but this sweet, candid moment never fails to make me smile.
Changing the background photos on your phone every once in a while is a small effort but a surprisingly big reward. When I pick up my phone, a smile breaks up what is usually an automatic, thoughtless process. Seeing these pictures each time is a little surprise, followed by a smile and a warm feeling of happiness. I capture hundreds of moments each year; some worth treasuring, others not. Technology has made documenting my surroundings so easy that snapping a picture “just in case” has become my default setting. This week, I interrupted this cycle. I added a little intentionality into a mundane and inevitable part of my day and it worked. I felt small bursts of joy that I never would have felt if I’d stuck with the default blue. Or was it the Eiffel Tower?
Sources
48 Little Things You Can Do to Make Yourself Happier Now
Elyse Gorman | @notesonbliss | ( https://elysesantilli.com/ ) on Thought Catalog
How to Be Happy 