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Revisiting the past

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When was the last time you pulled out those old photo albums and flipped through the pages? Or, in this age of social media, when was the last time you logged into Facebook and actually scrolled through the images you’ve been sharing with the rest of the world over the past decade or so?

I did so almost by accident over the weekend and came away feeling, I don’t know, a little more centered? There’s something about seeing where you’ve been – the ups and the downs you have already made it through – that makes the insanity and breakneck pace of the modern world feel a little more manageable.

I’ve been in my “new” place a couple years now and decided it was time to go through all of those boxes I had squirreled away in storage closets to make sure their contents was really worth hanging on to. If I haven’t needed anything in them for more than 24 months, I figured it might be time to part with some of the junk.

In the midst of all of that, I came across a box I had totally forgotten about. It was a large bin of pictures, and I’m talking hundreds upon hundreds of them.

I’ve always been something of a shutterbug. My folks frequently bought me disposable cameras when I was a kid and I eventually got an actual camera for Christmas one year, so I took tons of photos.

I also happened to go to college just as digital photography was starting to take over, which meant working with film was still an option. So, again, I had piles of envelopes of photos accumulated from four years’ worth of photography classes.

When I discovered the box of photos, I recalled thinking several years ago, “I need to go through all of these someday, keep the good ones and chuck the bad.”

I made the mistake of thinking this would be a breezy task and ended up spending an entire Sunday plowing through the piles of images.

That was a therapeutic process, as it turns out.

From images of old friends and classmates to family vacations and get-togethers, I got to go on a stroll down memory lane that spanned everything from some of my earliest childhood adventures to fishing trips, baseball games, holiday gatherings galore and class photo projects aplenty.

My memory was jogged by images of people I’m ashamed to say I had all but forgotten about, and my heart was warmed by pictures of people who have had a tremendous impact on my life. And then there were pictures of trees or rocks I thought looked pretty cool.

I also got a chuckle out of the fact that, as a kid, I frequently took half a dozen photos of the exact same thing. I’ll argue that was simply an example of me “honing my craft,” but at least it made throwing out oodles of duplicates a breeze.

Taking this whirlwind tour through my life was an eye-opening experience. From the good to the bad, it showed me how I viewed the world and reminded me of what it has taken for me to get to this point.

It felt like a weight was lifted when I finally flipped through the last pile of photos, and I’m looking forward to adding to that (now far more manageable) collection in the years to come.