Still life existence.

It's really weird to look at old pictures. Entire segments of a life can be summed up in one single photograph.

To other people it's just a still shot. A picture of you smiling. A picture of you in an unknown kitchen. A picture of a group of fifteen-year-old faces with beers in their hands. A picture of a friend who slipped from your grasp. A picture of a girl and a boy kissing.

To you, it's more than that. It's documentation of another time in your life, documentation of emotions that nobody could know but you. Beneath the still shot, the picture of you smiling, there are feelings. Memories. And sometimes, those fade too. With the way our brains work and the fact that we can only retain so much, it's odd to think that some things will just be forgotten. There is a beauty in that, in a sense.

Pictures reveal the passing of time. They are proof that seasons change, people change, feelings change. It's strange to look at a picture and feel nothing at all. A picture that used to mean so much to you, a two-second flash that symbolized a friendship or love that was so fresh at the time, now means nothing. It's strange when this picture becomes just another still shot of smiling faces. It's strange when this doesn't make you sad.

Photographs are vital. They are consumed with emotion. Whether good or bad, pictures are proof of our existence. Pictures are brief and fleeting shots of moments in our lives we felt it necessary to embrace and remember.

When I look back on old pictures, I am so thankful I took them. Nothing else in this world can sum up a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, or decade better. Nothing else can sum up a night you will never forget, a drunken stooper, an undeniably awkward stage, a loneliness, a first love, a second love, a precursor to a series of bad decisions, a glimpse into the heart of a person.

Nothing sums up the effects of the universe better than a picture.