21May28 | Visual snapshots as form of time travel

Snapshots enable glimpses into the past & the future.

The idea of snapshots is something I've been always obsessed about, and even talked about multiple times irl. I like to think of certain visuals in my mind as snapshots that are timeless –– through extended stretches of time. Think of snapshots as units of thought that can withstand anything and are independent of any variables. Those are the visuals that no matter what happened are always going to be there in my living mind, and probably thereafter. They are future-proof and they can't lose their meaning nor get diluted with newer streams of information & emotion.

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These snapshots strengthen the idea of the connectedness of time and it helps calibrate your compass towards what matters.

In the grand picture, if we could condense life & days to some shots, then that's all there is to it, right? That may be the most important thing, and I think that makes utmost sense. It's the reason I keep thinking about life in snapshots, past & future, here & now, everything is just a snapshot in a docuseries through time. It starts with your first moments & ends with your last moments, and if there was ever something concrete about these moments it will only be in or about these snapshots.

I noticed successful people keep thinking about their future in snapshots, they see themselves reach some place or achieve something and it won't ever be possible if they can't see it earlier in time. You only see what you can, but if you can't see it then you can't be it. Sort of like how lucid dreams work but without the transcending aspect of it, just constructing some visuals and then being flexible enough to let them aside.

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I have been using instagram since its first week, when we were sharing overexposed photos through instagram's built-in filters. Over the past 4-5 years, I went through two big shifts, in chronological order:

• from using instagram for highlighting to using instagram for documenting
• from documenting heavily-selected stuff to documenting barely-selected snapshots

This second shift made using the app a thousand times easier: Zero-overhead, zero-thinking & zero-justification goes in posting stuff. I go by in real life with my phone camera close and I take photos of moments I want to remember then I favorite some of those in iOS then I post those when I feel like posting something. If anything I'm primarily doing it for my future-self and maybe my kids would find it fun many years from now.

Imo this idea of "snapshot" dumping may be the best thing that happened to the app. You went from highlighting too many meaningless stuff to documenting snapshots that you currently believe can withstand time, with stories that can still resonate many years from now.

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Back to real life, this concept of capturing shots as you go makes your moments far more valuable. Things change, people change, and most importantly, you change, but that doesn't always mean that older snapshots were false. And that's why I value them so much.

I generally have no expectations from life, I know all what I get is all what I am, and that makes me cherish good moments when I feel them. I even don't worry about when or what if they fade out. Every snapshot that matters will find its way through time. If I have to interfere, it defies the logic of having them in the first place.

And that puts emphasis on all the snapshots that are vivid in my mind right now. If they could withstand time and live until today, they should be very special, even more special than what I thought of them at the time they were in. That is the beauty of it.

Another important thing about snapshots is that, because they are visuals that represent states, they can represent anything in your brain from the past, the present or the future. Through visualization, you can effectively construct snapshots of your future in your brain and they will remain there and be treated just as any type of visual. This is hard to absorb but I saw it. This instantly makes sense only when you see a snapshot in your present that you previously constructed at an earlier point in time. And that's different from experiencing a deja-vu. I'm not just talking about a scene, but rather a state.

I very recently came to an aha moment when I realized I am into some certain types of music just because of the time component. I rewind snapshots as I am listening to them and create new ones as I am listening to newer ones, but that's not all there is to it. What's different is that this kind of art –at least for me– seems eternal, meaning it will most likely trigger the same thought chain every time until the very end of my life. And that's mind-blowing. I can't say the same for anything else I consume or interact with. And although that's a power that sometimes makes me afraid of my own thoughts, it makes me glad I at least can have a rough explanation about it.