Our inability to forget our past due to the presence of technology is making the act of living our lives unnecessarily cumbersome. Here’s a quick how-to to turn that frown upside down!

Much to the chagrin of grammar enthusiasts, no, after 9 years of writing for this amazing publication, our word check has not failed to correct Sads to Sand in the title. In this grand month, the finale of 2019, it seems fitting to go over the agonizing reality which forms our future, and that is the sad feeling we get at the passage of time.

Those of us that had the good fortune to be born in the 80s and 90s might be aware of the movie Sphere, it makes for good watching as it contains a very powerful message whereby Samuel L. Jackson states (sans his customary cuss words) that as human beings we have the power to forget. Add to this the Arabic name for human: in-san, which comes from the verb “to forget”.

However, the selfie craze and social media overload has caused us to upload a giant chunk of our collective history into “the cloud”, causing the AI to constantly badger us with requests to look back upon and view our memories. This goes against our natural programming of forgetfulness as one cannot forget something they are constantly reminded by.

Now, even if by some strange miracle of willpower you managed to avoid social media entirely and live under a rock of some sort, you still have a smartphone, with a camera, and a digital trail of photographs neatly categorized chronologically for your viewing pleasure of the entirety of your history (since purchasing said smartphone).

Once-upon-a-time, reminiscing about yesteryear required the Herculean effort of searching the attic for photo albums and randomly thumbing through them for a trip back in time, for photographs serve as anchors to our past. Nowadays, that arduous task is replaced with a few swipes of your thumb.

Not only that, the current state of technology has rendered obsolete many a movie plot. You can no longer embellish your past as it is most probably caught in living color somewhere on your hard-disks (or social media), you cannot pretend to be where you were not through inception (think DiCaprio) or deception.

It is this writer’s belief that our ability to instantly access our past follies is what deprives us of the pleasure of enjoying the moment. Compounding this dilemma is our ability to sadly live through the eyes of our friends and flip through their lives (past and present), such as a beautiful destination they visited we enviously wish to emulate (imagine breaking into a friend’s house to look through their photo albums – now think about that every time you go through their profile). 

As a result of Social Media Sensory Overload (SMSO), we are constantly reminded of how little we think we have done, but we’re also bombarded with the escapades of everyone in our friends list, quickening our descent through the hour-glass (so are the Days of our Lives – a real Soap Drama, not merely an invention of /reference to Friends – unlike Angels with Filthy Souls and Home Alone, which you know you’re watching this month).

So, now that we have identified the problem, what is the solution? A simple, quick fix would be to deactivate social media. However, it will not prove effective in the long run. The true release comes from the knowledge that our past is in the past (queue an off-tune “Let It Go”) and no amount of reminiscing can bring it back, so instead of fixating on it, why not look forward (figuratively and literally away from your smart-phones) and focus on the memories to be made?

It is quite easy to lose ourselves in the past, especially when it constantly pops up all around us, including pasts that are not ours. Just as libraries are full of books that are different, so too are people full of different experiences – any comparison to others would be akin to the age-old adage of apples-to-oranges.

Focus on your future apples (and never forget, an apple a day keeps the doctor away!).

Like the Rubik’s Cube, Ayman Nassar is multi-colored in his interests, from running to organizing races, stand- up comedy and internal audit, plus a little writing on the side. You can find him on YouTube or follow him on Instagram @lordaymz. Photo by Gemma Evans on Unsplash.