Why technology makes transitions hurt even more

Indeed, we never know the actual value of a moment until it’s gone. It’s a saying that has been a cliche scratched again and again like a broken record. It keeps on being played throughout the background of our lives, but we never listen. I cannot tell you how many nights I have spent crying. Crying over videos that contain so many waves of laughter and over video recordings that I wish I made but never did. It’s true. Technology makes transitions hurt even more. 

Why? Because technology slaps you with vivid images of what used to be but isn’t anymore. 

There are times when you realize you miss these smiling people in your videos, not knowing it would be the last video you have of them. On the other hand, there are times when you know you don’t have any videos of the person you miss the most. I don’t know which one hurts more, so both are equally painful, I guess. 

This became more apparent during the pandemic. We’ve all lost so much. Our lives, our energy, and our loved ones- lost to the COVID-19 virus. The world we used to know is now only preserved through digital images and videos. 

Life after the COVID-19 pandemic era will be a different one, and we all know it. 

Gone are the days of being in public without a facemask. Now, your routine includes bringing facemasks, shields, and alcohol sprayers. No more warm embrace when you see an old friend you haven’t seen in a long time. Social distancing is the norm that should be followed, at all times.

More and more human roles will be filled in by technology. 

Face-to-face classes for all students will be a thing of the past. The next generation of students will only have a laptop as their classmate. They will never know the feeling of being in a rambunctious and crowded hallway and classroom. 

Chit-chats are replaced by chats. Little by little, the envisioned future of the people in the past will come true. The world as we know it will be full of robots and machinery will take over.  

With technology advancing, it just makes the frailty of human life more apparent. 

They say technology has made life easier, but it has made remembering so much harder. Why? People’s memories can get hazy and foggy. However, when people can clearly look at moments again through videos and pictures, the pain hits them harder. It is clearer to see what they had lost and never found. What they had found but lost- the value of the moment they captured on camera. 

These are all the thoughts that come into my head as I stare at my phone’s gallery.

Old pictures, old memories, old life. It’s time to usher in the permanently new normal, which will be a new chapter for all of us. 

We gained so much from technology but lost just as much.

I can only pray that we learn not to dwell on what is not and could’ve been. 

 I miss so many things and so many people that the sadness is piling up in my heart. But the person I miss most of all is the person I was before all this pandemic- the person who didn’t know of all that she would lose. 

I try to forget, but technology preserves my past. Happy nostalgia is replaced by an aching longing- and it’s a truth we all have to accept. 

Maybe it’s time I deleted my pictures and videos.