I don’t know who coined the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’… But I feel like it has seriously taken away the power of words. So often you see people, at an event, or a situation.. No one bothers looking through their own eyes anymore.. Everything is seen through the eyes of a lens, or a smart- phone screen. No longer do we pass down memories through stories… We share pictures on social media. The mass amounts of experiences are captured every different angle, edited and taken until it’s exactly what we want everyone else to see. No longer is it the truth, it’s a skewed version of reality. The one we want to share. Embarrassing moments no longer something we blush about… But instead find a way to put a spin on it to make it ‘cooler’ or funny to our friends or those we are trying to impress or care show interest in our lives. Endearing moments are no longer something we fondly look back at… They are forgotten, digital photos, shoved into an electric file in long term memory on a stick or hard drive… Rarely, if ever to be pulled up again. After all, the birthday party you wanted to remember has 2000 photos or more you’d have to search through to get that one or two you can’t exactly remember the details for. So they just sit. Waiting for the eventual storage they will end up in and our grandchildren will never go through such archaic technology for memories that have zero connection to them. As the art of engaging someone in a story to pull them in to share that experience has been long forgotten.
I frequently tell my kids, it’s about the stories.. The memories you make. I am just as guilty as everyone else. Watching a beautiful sunset… Capturing it on my camera, with all the intentions of doing something with it later. Something I’ve realized though is, no matter what I see when I see it, at that moment before I snap a picture, when I look at the picture again, it’s never the same. Never as brilliantly colored. Never as sharp. Never as breathtaking. It doesn’t give me the same gasp that the original did. Nor does it have the same effect that I want it to on anyone else I show. Because of this, I’ve started to enjoy what I see, make a conscious decision to set down the camera and instead, start building the picture I my head, using words. It’s an art form, quickly disappearing.. Doubt me? Ask anyone under the age of 25 to tell you a story…. Any story, in their own words. Without this skill, imagination is leaving, beauty is being dulled and cheapened. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for pictures. I’m saying they are replacing social functionality when overused. It’s dumbing down the next generation.
A picture is worth a thousand words… Maybe when pictures were new, unknown territory. When, instead of telling someone how to close a suture.. A picture could answer questions, give guidance when explanations are difficult. Words have been shoved to the side, shown as unimportant, slang, misspellings, all pointing to the lack of respect given our main link to our past and future. Good story-tellers are becoming harder and harder to find. I’m not talking about the story content either.. I’ve read amazing ideas, that were so poorly written, it was hard to finish the book. And likewise, I’ve read horrible ideas that the words ran like melted butter over the pages, one into the next, until I was done and realized I could never compare to the author… As the story I had just finished, no matter how I tried to explain it, coming from me, sounded like a snooze-fest.
I want to write like that. I want to draw someone into the picture I’m painting with my words that the book takes them away to another place completely, so that when the end is reached, it’s a painful goodbye as they move back in to their lives, remembering it like a favorite vacation. I know this takes practice. The more I practice telling stories, the more engaging they become. They better they will be. That’s the beauty of stories… Everyone gets better the more they do it.. And we are raising a generation that has never even had a chance to try.
A picture might be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words can paint a masterpiece that is differs for every person that reads or hears it.