Read This If You Panic About Forgetting The Happy Moments

Hello again! I wrote this post in August, but never posted it. Perfectionism is a silly thing, and it's not going to stop me today. So here it finally is.

My bestie Sierra and I on a ferry to the San Juan Islands in Washington (January 2019)

The feeling of a hummingbird zipping past your ear or hovering next to you is pretty unique. Almost like a nearby bee, it buzzes loudly, but it's due to the rapid flapping of its wings (up to seventy per second!). Hummingbirds are so small, yet amazingly powerful, with hearts beating up to 1,260 beats per minute. They're gorgeous. Also, they make a coo-like chirp if you're close enough to hear it. To me, it sounds like a very tiny engine has whirred by my ear when one flies right past me.

I don't have any pictures or videos of hummingbirds to show you today. I don't want to have any besides the one or two in my phone already. When I see one, I'll just stand there and watch in awe for a minute or two until the speedy creature zooms up into a tree. It'll be back soon anyway.

I'm getting a lot better about how I approach joyful moments in my life. One of the biggest struggles in my personal mental health journey is about how I want - no, need - to capture happy moments in my life. That's how I often feel. It's perfectly okay to take a video, take a picture, post it somewhere, or write about an experience. It can be especially treasurable if we don't want to forget how we felt in those moments- whether it was thrill, joy, deep connection to another person, or just vividly alive.

But, like every other thing in life (yes, every other thing), balance is the key to keeping it healthy. Do you let your life blur by without embracing the moments in which you feel the most alive? Do you "forebode joy" out of fear of being disappointed or sad later comparatively (as Brené Brown describes in her novel Daring Greatly, a read I highly recommend)?

Another way to look at it: Do you always have your phone camera pointed at your source of excitement or intrigue? Is your room filled with books on books on books of journal entries from moments or thoughts you don't want to forget?

Well, maybe that's okay too. Whatever your answer may be, it's up to you and how you feel. But I know that, due to own my mental health issues, I sometimes panic and want to bang my head against a wall from fear of forgetting the moments that have brought me joy. What would happen if I lost my happy moments forever?

What would keep me going if I faced a chapter unaccompanied by happy moments?

What would shape who I become if I were to forget the little lessons others teach me? How bad would it be for my future or my contentedness if these moments were "wasted" by not becoming vivid memories for me to look back on with full appreciation?

I'm getting much better. But it takes a lot of self-control and practice. I am confronted with these fears at times in my life when I feel the most connected to myself, others, or the world around me.

Here are some examples:

When,

• I have a loving moment with a friend, like when my best friend played Detroit with me and experienced all of the clashing emotions that I felt when I played it myself;

• My other best friend and I rely on each other about very vulnerable parts of us, and I feel more connected to a person than perhaps ever before;

• My dad tells me how much he loves me and is proud of me;

• He shares a funny story or laughs at one of my jokes or gives me advice that I don't want to forget;

• I'm sitting on a speedboat in Italy with the sea breeze on my face and champagne in my hand, the water below glisteningly clear;

• I'm riding horseback in a silent, lush forest on an island in another state and all I see is the green of the world and all I hear is my horse's pace;

These are a few of my absolute favorite moments from the past two years. And do you know what the prominent aching thought in my head was the entire time I was actually living them?

"You are going to forget this. It will flash by and be gone forever, and you'll never be able to look back on it, and you may never feel this happy again. The only solution is to take dozens of pictures, many minutes of video, and write your ass off about every detail. If you can relive it later, it will be a permanent tool for staying happy."

And let me tell you, in my head, that voice is loud.

Again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with tangibly capturing a moment. It can be fun, healthy, and precious.

But when the desire to capture a moment comes from a place of fear, something is wrong. And capturing it becomes very temporary relief for an on-going itch.

So, one of my most trying on-going challenges has become devoted to having the courage to say "No" to this voice.

Here I am in the present, and I still remember all of the treasured experiences I listed above. And I spent a little time capturing some of them! I took a few photos and videos on that horseback ride; I took a video of my friend talking about her current agony over a character in Detroit.

A clean quit from capturing moments tangibly isn't the proper solution here. It's always comes back to balance.

And yeah, the truth is I'm not going to remember all of the moments that felt wonderful. But I don't need to remember all of them to be happy. I don't want the contentedness of my life to be so dependent on that.

I don't want to spend the precious time of my life desperately trying to remember what I've lived and felt. I want to spend it living and feeling.

I take a lot of pictures and videos of frogs that I find in my dad's yard. It makes me giddy to find a frog; they're my absolute favorite. I give myself quite a bit of leeway in this instance because I've never been around this many frogs and I don't know when I'll get a chance to be seeing any frogs again. But I make sure that not every moment involves a camera or an Instagram post. Many of our interactions are just about watching and listening until the moment passes and telling myself, "It's okay to not pull out the camera. Let's enjoy the moment while it's here."

An upside to this feeling is that it pushes a lot of my passions into a creative space. When I watch a TV show or a movie that I find inspiring, I fall in love with it and I analyze everything about it. I want to know what made it so special and emotional for me, from music to casting to subplots to facial expressions to specific lines of dialogue. I often write about those details in a journal (or start a blog post that I'll never finish, which I must forgive myself for).

This trait also feeds my attention to detail, as I just described. When I have an assignment (if there's anything about it that really intrigues me), or an art project, or a gift to prepare for a loved one, I become invested in getting it all right and making something beautiful. And I really appreciate that aspect of this whole thing.

But there's a big conscious choice within those efforts as well. Those who struggle with perfectionism can relate to this. What's going to take my headspace from creative to overly critical, and how can I be aware of the difference? Where am I willing to place a boundary so that my work can remain creatively thoughtful instead of agonizingly flawless?

No one's going to notice if the color scheme on your assignment isn't perfectly calculated or if the font isn't ideally proportional to the border. No one's going to sneer if the creations on your canvas aren't the spitting image of real life spruce trees. No one's going to bat an eye if you don't take notes on what you thought made this episode of New Girl brilliantly written or executed.

You care about the perfection of your creation a lot more than other people do.

While they see something creative, you might be looking at something that represents your self-worth, and that's no way to live.

And that's not to say that others are not invested in your success or future, but the details that drive you crazy? It's highly likely that you're the only one that notices them.

Enamoring is fun. Enjoyable. Wonderful. Obsessing is not.

I struggle greatly with my obsessive compulsive behaviors. And it's not something I talk about often. I probably will more at a later date because I want to help others who are going through what I've gone through, even if I only reach one or two people.

Hearing the little "You're going to forget" voice can get me panicked, and at that point I have three options:

1. Give in and capture as much as I can even though I know it will never sustainably satisfy me

2. Try to drown out all of my thoughts by listening to music and podcasts and watching tv and movies and YouTube nonstop, completely numbing myself from my fears and my joy

3. Tell the voice to shove it, and enjoy the temporary pleasure of my moments while they last. It's my right as a human being with a human brain in this life that is short and composed of moments.

It's difficult. It gets easier, though. And can you guess which response leaves me feeling the most fulfilled in the end?

At a certain point you realize that your options are limited, and so is your time here on earth, so you have a choice to make. What do you want to spend the precious energy and time of your life doing? Enjoying the joyful moments? Or worrying about them, making an endless, meticulous catalogue of proof that your moments occurred at all?

If you take only one thing from this post, let it be this:

If taking pictures of your experiences gives you joy, do it.

If recording your experiences gives you joy, do it.

If writing about your experiences gives you joy, do it.

Those things are valuable. They demonstrate where you've been, how far you've come, and what's affecting your growth as a person. Self reflection is important and so are happy memories. Allow yourself to look back, if you feel you will value that. It's such a gift to look back.

But if these impulses are past desire, and they feel like absolute needs for survival or sustaining any happiness- it might be time to reflect. What are your intentions with these pieces of the past? If remembering is important to you, that's perfectly okay, but try asking yourself, why is remembering this moment important to me?

When you capture your moments, does it leave you feeling content and warm? Or does it leave you with temporary relief from the panic? I encourage anyone struggling with the latter to have the courage to say not today to the voice. It's scary, but I promise, you won't regret it.

Thank you for reading. :)