Can you recognize yourself?

I have just come to an understanding of why people take photos and the meaning to them. That when you are sitting in bed alone and have nothing to do... you go through photos to look back into the moments full of love, friends, adventures, sports and endless more all captured in one click of a button. 

I spent some time scrolling through my camera roll on my laptop. I have 2,747 memories collected sitting on my laptop that no one has access to but me. I got bored of scrolling one by one, because a teenager in my generation has the attention span of a fly. So I did what any one would do who wanted to say they scrolled through all their photos. (I don't even think I made it half way through). I held the right arrow button down making a super fast slideshow for myself of moments I loved so much I needed to be able to see it a second time. I get that now although I don't think it will change my mind set enough to pull out my phone and take a photo of everything I see.

I do not need to see everything I have seen in this world twice. Although sometimes yes, it is nice to see a collection of pictures laughing with friends, my dogs when they were puppies, sibling moments, when the whole family is together or even just being a reckless teenager. I smiled at everything I looked back on, that in these moments the photos were taken I was enjoying myself, surrounded my people I love.

I guess you can learn a lot about the photos someone has on their phones, what they like to do, who they are friends with, who their family is and honestly so much more. I am never one to ask someone to take a photo. Every photo of me in it, I can almost guarantee it was not taken on my phone, but someone I was with sent it to me after the fact. 

Looking at all these photos made me think if you have ever looked at a photo of yourself or looked in the mirror and did not recognize yourself. Maybe it only happens for a split second in time but for me it has happened several times. It is a weird sensation, that yes it is you, yet for a moment in time your brain was like, "nope, who is this person?"  

The only way I can wrap my head around that and come up with some sort of explanation is we change our looks constantly. Yes as we grow we look older etc. but I also mean with style and who we surround ourselves with. That when you are around a set group of people you begin to fit into that style or group. Then maybe with time you find yourself with new people so you change again, so on and so forth as you grow and meet new people. 

When I was looking at these photos, this may sound stupid, but the only time I truly recognized myself, the me I am now is when 1. I was with my current friends, 2. with family,  (heres the stupid one) 3. wearing a backward hat.

That as time passed I lost certain friends and started wearing a hat everyday. That is the person I see myself as right now. I know myself by the friends I am with, the clothes I wear and the things I am doing. That 5 years ago the person I looked at in the mirror may look the exact same but in comparison side by side are drastically different. At least the way I look at it.

So if photos never existed we would not be able to truly compare ourselves. That you would just know who you were right there and then. You could not look back at what you looked like before. To me that is so interesting. That we would have to live more in the moment. Maybe that is the reason I don't take photos because all they will do for me in the end is cause me to compare the person I am as I look into the photo and the person I was when it was taken. I don't like doing that with anything in my life, especially not myself. The only thing I care about is who I am right now and who I want to be tomorrow.

Each day we wake up and have a new face starring back at us in the mirror, yet almost every time we quickly realize, that is the new us. The moments in time where we question ourselves are the ones that stick with me the most.