<\/p>\n

25,700 photographs to chronicle one life.<\/p>\n

Photographs of all the firsts:\u00a0 teeth, steps, days of school.\u00a0 Photographs of the most significant days:\u00a0 weddings, graduations, birthday celebrations.\u00a0 But also photographs of the most routine days, of the most common activities:\u00a0 taking a walk, eating a meal, hanging out with a friend.<\/p>\n

Imagine them piled somewhere \u2013 overflowing thousands of albums or stuffed in dozens of bins, cycling on a lengthy loop projected onto a large screen.<\/p>\n

These are not 25,700 photos taken by media sources; they are not the pictures of celebrities, politicians, or anyone famous.<\/p>\n

These are photos of one typical Western person born during the 1980s or 1990s.<\/p>\n

25,700 selfies \u2013 the average number estimated to be taken<\/strong><\/a> by a millennial today.<\/p>\n

One person, one life; 25,700 pictures.<\/p>\n

Many concerns are raised about statistics like these. \u00a0Does so much picture taking and sharing promote vanity<\/strong>?<\/a><\/p>\n

Do selfies create narcissim?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

There are even statistics available that indicate the physical dangers that can occur during the practice of taking a self-portrait photograph; apparently, this habit is more deadly than are shark a<\/strong>ttacks<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

My interest is in something deadly in another way \u2013 the death of our ability to experience life as we are chronicling it.\u00a0 And specifically, I wonder what effect that may have on our dying.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What is it like to die in the Selfie Age?<\/p>\n

I watch with fascination people around me capturing their experiences and sharing them even as these experiences are occurring.\u00a0 Many people take pictures of themselves and post to social media sources throughout each day of their lives, it seems: pictures of what they eat and of their hairstyles; pictures of them with family members, with friends, with their pets; pictures constructed to tell a story of their life.<\/p>\n

These images appear everywhere \u2013 images taken at arms length, usually from an angle that shows the most flattering view, often manipulated through computer applications to show something quite different from the original.<\/p>\n

When the subject of a set of those 25,700 photographs dies, what role will these selfies play in the memory of that subject?\u00a0 Will these lives be viewed through the lens of the selfie?<\/p>\n

There is a tradition that holds that each of us dies twice.\u00a0 Our first death is that of our physical body.\u00a0\u00a0 Our second, more final, death occurs when the last person who remembers us dies.\u00a0 This is the death of something much more ephemeral than our physical form, even less fixed than our spiritual bodies \u2013 it is the death of the memory of us.\u00a0 Although it is something over which we have absolutely no control, it is obviously of huge importance to humans.\u00a0\u00a0 And this importance can lead to obsessive grasping; we cling to the relationships, to the identities we have constructed, and even to the objects we think signify these relationships and identities.\u00a0 We may study an artifact in hopes of proving someone\u2019s existence (or even our own); we may convince ourselves that we then know or understand the person or relationship memorialized by the object.\u00a0 However, it will never bring us closer to the person or the relationship.\u00a0 Indeed, all such images \u2013 physical and otherwise \u2013 can form barriers to truly relating, to truly being.<\/p>\n

So what about selfies?\u00a0 Will those of the millennial generation finally die their second deaths when the last of their selfies is destroyed?<\/p>\n

Years ago, I asked an elderly woman who was suffering with chronic health conditions, \u201cAre you happy with how your life is right now?\u201d\u00a0 Her answer was, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t want to be remembered this way.\u201d\u00a0 For years, it seemed she had been willing herself to die.\u00a0 Suffering as much spiritually and emotionally as she was physically, she spent most of her days in bed, senses dulled by pain medication.\u00a0 Concerned at her lack of presence, I became more direct with my question, \u201cI\u2019m asking you about YOU and YOUR LIFE.\u00a0 At the end of the day, can you look back and be content or at least at peace with the way it has gone?\u201d\u00a0 She continued to repeat the same answer, \u201cWell, I just don\u2019t want to be remembered this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although I remained concerned that she was fixated on this one idea, I also had great compassion for her.\u00a0 I too have spent time repeating similar phrases, albeit to myself rather than aloud.\u00a0 \u201cIs this what I want other people to know about me after I die?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cHow would I like to be remembered?\u201d\u00a0 And, early on, \u201cWill my children remember me at all?\u201d<\/p>\n

Challenges surrounding issues of identity are experienced acutely by almost everyone who is dying.\u00a0 In life, much of our thoughts and efforts cluster around constructions of identity:\u00a0 Who I am?\u00a0 What do I do in the world?\u00a0 With whom do I relate?\u00a0 We spend much of our time fashioning social masks, each of which forms a different lens in the kaleidoscope of our identity.<\/p>\n

Today, those masks are shared with the world through each of those 25,700 selfies.<\/p>\n

Of my three death walks, the one during which I spent the most time in the realm of these issues of image and identity was likely the second time I was faced with physical death.\u00a0 Plunged into congestive heart failure immediately following my daughter\u2019s birth, I filled hours \u2013 days and weeks, even \u2013 obsessed about the image of me that would be left for this little girl.\u00a0 If this were happening today, I likely would be taking lots of selfies, so that she could someday visualize what her mother had looked like.\u00a0 But would those pictures help her better know a mother who was no longer with her?<\/p>\n

As we spent long nights on the couch, her nursing and me coughing, I felt tremendous grief that my daughter might never know me.\u00a0 Her older brother may maintain bits of memory of his mother, but this infant would not.\u00a0 If I died, what she would experience of me would all be based on constructs \u2013 a mother pieced together through other people\u2019s memories, through photographs and miscellaneous memorabilia.\u00a0 As I had when I was dying during her brother\u2019s early life, I wondered if I perhaps should write her letters, tape videos for her, leave her instructions and bits of wisdom.\u00a0 I had read of many parents doing this, and it seemed a beautiful gift to leave.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cBut would it be truly a gift?\u201d I began to wonder.\u00a0 I did not know this little girl at eight or at eighteen.\u00a0 I knew her only in this moment.\u00a0 How could I construct a relationship with someone who did not yet exist?\u00a0 And how challenging would it be for her to relate to someone who no longer existed?\u00a0 For me, releasing the desire to leave behind an image of myself was challenging, and it was absolutely the way to peace.<\/p>\n

Paul Kalanithi, the young physician whose When Breath Becomes Air<\/em> beautifully shares his dying experience, expressed similar uncertainties in relationship to his infant daughter:<\/p>\n

Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: my daughter, Cady. I hope I\u2019ll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters \u2014 but what would they really say? I don\u2019t know what this girl will be like when she is 15; I don\u2019t even know if she\u2019ll take to the nickname we\u2019ve given her.\u00a0http:\/\/bit.ly\/1sY6H8P<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

While realizing the futility of trying to create a relationship with the future child who is now an infant may see obvious, it really is no different from trying to create a relationship with the future of any<\/em> person.\u00a0 Relationships exist in the present moment.<\/p>\n

My father\u2019s house burned down when he was a teenager; as a result, there are only a few pictures that exist of his mother, who died when he was just a toddler.\u00a0 On family visits to his hometown, people would often remark how much I looked like my grandmother, whom I had never met and whom my father could not remember.\u00a0 His older brother, who remembered his mother\u2019s face quite clearly, frequently stared into my eyes and commented on how much they resembled hers.\u00a0 That sometimes made me sad; I felt disappointed not ever to get to see someone who, through the wonders of DNA, looked so much like me, an occurrence I had never before experienced.\u00a0 Other times, I was quite happy to know that someone<\/em> in my family looked like me, that green eyes were not such an oddity.\u00a0 And at those times I deeply longed to see a picture of her.\u00a0 But when I finally did see a photograph of my grandmother, I was struck by the realization that it was just an image; it did not help me understand this woman or know her or feel connected with her.\u00a0 It could not be a physical manifestation of a relationship, because there was no relationship \u2014 not in the way my childhood mind was constructing one.<\/p>\n

The photograph was a symbol of my grandmother; it was not my grandmother.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Each of those 25,700 selfies taken by a millennial today is such a symbol.\u00a0 Does it help those of us left behind after a loved one\u2019s death better remember that person?<\/p>\n

Maybe it does.\u00a0 The Spanish word recuerdo<\/em> can mean either memory or souvenir, indicating the ways in which objects can be imbued with meaning when they are associated with strong memories.<\/p>\n

Palliative care physician Ira Byock has found that \u201cThe specter of death reveals our relationships to be our most precious possessions\u201d (The Four Things that Matter Most:\u00a0 A Book About Living<\/em>).\u00a0 Yet we cling to the possessions that we think will represent us and those relationships once we have died.\u00a0 And my concern is that we are so busy making those objects today that we may not be focused on the experiences that will one day become the memories.<\/p>\n

Perhaps death itself is something that can nudge us to put down the camera for just one moment and actually live.\u00a0 Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald Miller note that often the \u201cintrusion of thanatos (death)\u201d allows us to locate the self that \u201cdwells behind the mask of our persona\u201d, the truth of who we are underneath all the constructs of who we think we are and who we present ourselves as (From Age-ing to Sage-ing:\u00a0 A Profound Vision of Growing Older<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Kalanithi\u2019s wisdom again encourages me; here he addresses his infant daughter:<\/p>\n

That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man\u2019s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing. (http:\/\/stan.md\/1zA8kWr<\/a>\u00a0to watch a short video about Kalanithi\u2019s work, see http:\/\/bit.ly\/2rYMm7h)<\/u><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What if each of us could experience and share that kind of joy \u2013 one that does not hunger for more and more, one that needs no representation to prove it was here, one that rests in this moment?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I frequently admonish my children to put down their phones, to be present rather than to focus on representing the present.\u00a0 To live from the inside out rather than the outside in, which is the focus of selfies and social media postings.\u00a0 \u201cMama, you just don\u2019t get it,\u201d they tell me, \u201cEveryone does this.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re right \u2013 almost all of their peers do<\/em> \u201cdo this\u201d.\u00a0 And I just don\u2019t get it.\u00a0 And that\u2019s part of the life they will perhaps remember \u2013 a mother hopelessly out of touch with some of the contemporary trends in her culture.\u00a0 A mother who consistently repeated the phrase, \u201cpresence, please,\u201d to herself and her loved ones.<\/p>\n

Or maybe they won\u2019t remember.\u00a0 That\u2019s the thing \u2013 we don\u2019t get to choose the legacy we leave behind.\u00a0 As much as we would like to create an image, an identity, these constructs are simply that \u2013 masks covering who we are.\u00a0 They sometimes reveal a bit of us, sometimes hide us entirely.<\/p>\n

People have always created constructions of themselves.\u00a0 Today, those constructions may be more in our faces \u2013 taken at arms length from a very flattering angle and modified digitally.\u00a0 But perhaps they are no different from the effigies in stone that wealthy people in the ancient world had created of themselves.\u00a0 Maybe they will just form incredibly long obituaries once someone dies.<\/p>\n

To focus on the mask rather than on what lies underneath, to view ourselves always from the outside rather than to live from the inside \u2013 these are some of the challenges of being human.\u00a0 Our work, it seems to me, is to not confuse the effigy with the person, to not become so focused on creating these chronicles of our lives that we forget to live those lives.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25,700 photographs to chronicle one life. Photographs of all the firsts:\u00a0 teeth, steps, days of school.\u00a0 Photographs of the most significant days:\u00a0 weddings, graduations, birthday celebrations.\u00a0 But also photographs of the most routine days, of the most common activities:\u00a0 taking a walk, eating a meal, hanging out with a friend. Imagine them piled somewhere \u2013 overflowing thousands of albums or stuffed in dozens of bins, cycling on a lengthy loop projected onto a large screen. These are not 25,700 photos taken by media sources; they are not the pictures of celebrities, politicians, or anyone famous. These are photos of one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n