I was looking through photos and came across this one of Scout from our trip to New York. She spiked a fever and felt awful and ended up in bed by 6pm. What’s interesting is that I really only remembered the whole event from this one photo, and I only took this photo to send to Nate.

Here’s what I have been chewing on: we take photos, for the most part, of things we want to remember. We post photos we want to memorialize. We’ve got rose colored camera lenses.

Rarely do people have a desire to photograph the screaming child, the fight with a spouse, the acne, the boring toast they eat every single day. It’s simply not what our brains want to hold onto; things we don’t long to relive.

This isn’t meant to be a blanket statement for every account you follow; I know many can appear light years away from your everyday reality. But with friends I know in my real life, I’m hoping to scroll with this lens: “What is this person seeking to remember and celebrate?”

The sunset. The anniversary. The trip. The picnic in the park where the baby miraculously didn’t scream the whole time. It’s one nanosecond of their day. A blip they could be clinging to in an otherwise difficult season. The moment I frame it that way, so much of the comparison and envy dissipates.

Their good doesn’t mean their life is perfect. Nor do I think they intend for it to. And perhaps we would all do well to take more pictures of breakfast cereal and bad hair days; to remember the mundane. But when it comes to this tiny app with these tiny squares, that small reframing has deeply helped my heart.