Remembering the moment

(Just hold that pose for another minute while the camera boots up)

The problem with being swept away in any particular emotion (rage, joy, take your pick), is the total inability to step back and analyze your feelings. If you have the presence of mind to think to yourself (wow, this is what raw, unadulterated sorrow looks like) chances are you aren’t really “swept away” in the fullest sense.

It all comes back to the “Uncertainty Principle” (always a useful go-to analogy). To butcher this somewhat complex theory of Physics, it speaks to the realization that all observations change the object being observed. Think of a subatomic particle proceeding on it’s merry way, when out of nowhere a photon of light knocks it off it’s course. That reflected light tells us what direction that particle is now traveling in, not the direction it was going before it was so rudely smacked in the face. Applied to social settings, it’s more simply stated that people act differently when they’re being watched.

(I’ve said it to just about everybody, but it could stand repetition, go see the play “Copenhagen” if you can. It will rock your world.)

But every now and then it’s us watching ourselves. Corrie and I don’t have many pictures of us having either great parties, or earth shaking dinners with friends. Not because we haven’t (that’s right, we’re all about the riotous fun), but because it would never occur to us to stop the good times, assemble our friends for a picture to preserve the moment. Just by doing that, the moment is lost and becomes something else. Now we’re looking at a bunch of people trying to represent what it means to have fun. Always seemed fake to me, so we just don’t do it.

Consider also the extreme sense of vulnerability of a half naked, laboring wife, and her potential reaction to her husband filming her misery. So many ways that can go badly for each of us.

(I thought I was getting your good side)

So we’ll probably take a few more pictures of how pregnant she is. Might take a picture or two of us leaving the house for the hospital, but there will be a bit of a blackout period during which the serious work gets done. You’ll just have to trust us when we tell stories of what actually happened.