'not a phone in sight...'

We’re not distracted. We’re just scared to forget.

Ever notice how, whenever something beautiful happens, we reach for our phones?

The plate hits the table. The bride walks down the aisle. The sky turns pink. The baby takes her first breath.

We reach for a phone…

Every time. It’s all documented.

Last weekend, I was at a wedding. My cousin, glowing in her white dress, walked down the same aisle her grandmother did 70 years ago.

I was sitting near the front. The music started. I looked over at my grandma.

Tears in her eyes. Overcome with joy. She reached for her phone, tapped the oversized camera icon and snapped 500 photos.

200 of the floor, sure. But the rest? A blurry, beautiful archive of her granddaughter’s moment.

I wondered… has tik tok brain rot phone addiction even reached my 82 25 year old young grandma!?

Or, was it something more human?

A fear? Fear that she might forget.

Psychologists call it terror management theory: the idea that we document, preserve, and create to cope with the fact that nothing lasts forever.

The way I see it…
My grandmas photos were a cry for both joy and help.

A quiet protest against time. A way of saying:

Please, I want this to last.

So next time you see 1000 phones at a concert and comments saying , ‘not a phone in sight’, smile. Maybe it’s 1000 people trying to hold on?

A quiet hope that whatever they’re feeling right then and there, won’t disappear.

We know it will…but we’ll still try.

Because nostalgia is proof you lived a life worth remembering. And every photo is a timestamp on something that mattered.

So take the photo. We can pretend it’ll last. And for a second, it almost does.

See you tomorrow.