What Do You Treasure?
What do you collect?
Is it ceramic statues, flying pigs, or favorite books?
Or maybe its something sentimental – postcards from places you’ve travelled, albums from concerts you’ve attended, baseball caps from each year’s College World Series, or drawings your children made back in preschool that (although to be honest you have no idea what the drawings are of….) are too beautiful to part from.
Has what you collect changed throughout your life? Mine has – Thank goodness!
Maybe you used to collect Beanie Babies or dolls. Pogs or baseball cards.
Or – if you’re me – maybe it was rocks.
Yes. Rocks…
No, not shiny pretty gemstone rocks. Not rocks that write on the cement like chalk.
Nope – Just rocks. Any rocks. All rocks.
… Like boring landscape rocks.
I would load up the grey rocks, one by one picking them from the landscaping of our house and dropping them in my purple plastic bucket, curating my collection – transporting them over to the driveway and dropping them in the hollow compartment in the seat of my bigwheel bike.
I didn’t collect the rocks because they were valuable. No, I collected them because they made me happy – not because they were beautiful or unique – but because they made my bigwheel go FAST.
I’d push my weighed-down bigwheel to the top of the hill, with all the might my 3-year-old body could muster. Face the bike headed down hill. Push off with my little feet before lifting them in the air, and…
Away I’d go – picking up feverish momentum, thanks to the not-so-precious rocks hidden in the seat of my bigwheel.
Of course, this didn’t last long – my parents quickly caught on to my mad-scientist-meets-wild-speedster ways…
All it took was 2 extra trips to Home Depot to buy replacement bags of landscape rocks for my dad to realize it wasn’t some neighborhood vandal stealing all his rocks. Likewise, my mom soon realized that as more rocks disappeared from the yard, my downhill bike speed got faster and faster, coinciding with an increase in the number of Little Mermaid bandages needed to cover up my scrapes (apparently I knew how to speed up, but not how to slow down…).
So, yes, I’m glad my collections have changed over time. I still collect things that make me feel happy – it’s just no longer speed-boosting rocks.
Now, it’s experiences. It’s the times I spend with the people I love, doing the things that bring me joy. So, now I collect pictures – pictures of my favorite people, favorite places, and favorite times.
My grandmother used to do this. It seemed like she always had a camera hanging around her neck, and at every family event you would undeniably hear her say, “Oh honey, hold on – let me get a picture of everyone!” – which was frequently met with groans by us brace-mouthed tween-aged grandchildren but, over time, as we outgrew our annoyance of any- and every- thing, we began appreciating just how precious these family moments are. We began to see her paparazzi ways as endearing.
And now I’m the one always toting a camera around (er, an iPhone – let’s be honest… the fancy camera I treated myself to only makes rare excursions – adding “use Nikon camera” to my never-ending to-do list now 😉).
I have become the one inevitably insisting everyone pause for a picture – or “pretend like I’m not here so I can get a candid shot!”.
As seasons have come and gone, I’m happy to have taken on this role in my family.
And with my friends.
And with my dog 😊. Oh my goodness, have I ever taken this role on with my dog… 11,071 photos and an extra Apple storage plan later…
Because I realize just how treasured these moments are.
I realize that our memory fades over time and that, if anything, our memory is reliably unreliable.
I desire to capture not just the image, but also the feelings, forever saving a glimpse of these moments – the twinkles in eyes, the waves that crash along the beach, the smiles and laughs on the faces you love, and the beautiful mountains that reach the sky.
… So I can re-experience and appreciate them over and over again, trying my best to deepen the grooves and impressions they have left in my brain, doing what I can to stop them from ever fading away.
… So I can reflect on all the good and feel the joy over and over again.
And it’s not just me…
Psychological research has shown the benefit of choosing experiences over things, doing rather than receiving, and sharing an experience rather than giving a physical gift. When it comes to experiences, we anticipate them more and experience more positive emotions than we do for getting ”stuff.” And if the experience is shared with another person? Well, it even serves to benefit the relationship and bond.
Plus, if we capture those spectacular moments in a way that we can relive them over and over, again and again, then aren’t those treasured moments the gifts that keep on giving?
As for me, I will continue to be a collector of experiences and a re-experiencer of moments, as well as a believer in the joy that comes along with them.
So, if you are wondering what to collect – why not start with what you treasure?
Want some more reading about the link between happiness and experiences? Check these out:
Entrepreneur.com
7 Reasons Why Spending Money on Experiences Makes Us Happier Than Buying Stuff
FastCompany.com
The Science Of Why You Should Spend Your Money On Experiences, Not Things
