A dare

This is a dare. Find good light: late afternoon is preferable, when the sunlight falls in long golden angles through the window or the trees. Take some pictures. Of your face. Of you. Good pictures, that you can love. Maybe go in front of a fan, where the occilating wind tosses your hair about. Maybe smile. Maybe hold the camera out, or prop it up on something sturdy. The important thing is: take pictures. Take enough to be sure there are a few you can look at and immediately love: no criticizing, no rejecting, no nit-picking. Post them. Leave your link. But mostly, just take the pictures.

Here’s why: You will not always be the age you are today, and someday you, or someone who loves you will want to look at these pictures, lingering over the way you looked so beautiful right in that moment, in good light with the wind in your hair.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. How life moves at an exponential speed. When you’re two, one year is half your life. When you’re thirty—a year is one thirtieth. Time compresses, blurs, flutters, but always moves forwards, and with it, you. Always changing. Who you are right now will be a smudge on the window of memory in a handful of years. Take some pictures. Like a watermark or a timestamp. Something to remind you. What are you like, right now?

I’m at this point in my life where I’ve just started to notice that I’m aging. Tiny crows feet dance at the corners of my eyes; a furrow between my brows forever marks the way I frown. Some days, when I kneel in front of the mirror with my little boy, his skin fresh and flawless, I am startled by how changed I am. How old I look. Of course, I know that for someone a dozen or two years older than I, nearly thirty is spring-chicken young. But that’s what I mean: sometimes in the moment it’s hard to just appreciate.

So go do it.