Author: Liz Dawes
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As with every holiday season, Easter produced a flurry of pictures on social media

Families relaxing in foreign climes; feral, chocolate-smeared children; sophisticated couples with cocktails around a spa pool…you get the idea.  They leapt out from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, a constant reminder of just how much fun everyone was having.

Currently, it’s de rigeur to sneer at such supposed narcissism, as well as to blame its rise on social media, but I think this is misplaced on both counts.  I recall only too well being forced at the age of six or seven to sit obediently by my Great Aunt Gertrude as she took us through her meticulously curated holiday snaps, though this was infinitely preferable to Great Uncle Frederick’s slide show of his bi-annual fossil hunt on the Jurassic Coast.  My point is that the change brought about by modern technology is merely the medium.

A more accurate observation might be that we have always been determined to create memorable events.  When we look back on our leisure time, we will recall it fondly and conclude that a happy time was had by all.  And of course the older we get, the faster time seems to pass, and the more we cling to the need to construct a positive narrative.  Nothing wrong with that, you might say.  After all, who wants to remember a miserable life?

Trouble is, I do wonder if, in the urge to create fond memories, we aren’t just documenting experiences rather than, well, experiencing them.

If you doubt this, then ask yourself the very interesting question posed by Daniel Kahneman in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” (a must read if you haven’t already). If you could have a wonderful holiday, at the end of which all evidence of it, including your memory, would be destroyed, would you still go?  My own view (though not shared by everyone) is that your “experiencing” self is, surely, just as important as your “remembering” self.

I’m not alone in noticing this.  I know several people who, over the Easter Break, made a conscious choice to remove all technology from their holiday.  A journalist friend went away without even her iPhone, a busy mother I know left all technology behind and relied on an actual paper map to get around (hold me). Every year, for just a few days, my mate Hatty switches off all technology and relies just on her landline.  People call her, and over glasses of wine they chat for hours. This is, definitively, not the way of social media and the cult of constant contact.

I had a few child-free days over Easter and went to the beautiful coast of Denmark.  I forced myself to leave my laptop at home, and although I had my phone with me it mostly stayed in the house.  There were no photos on FB (I didn’t take any) and I didn’t tweet.  Ok well once.  But only once.

Try it next time you go away.  Don’t devote your entire break to constructing memories.  Put the technology away, enjoy the moment, and give your experiencing self some proper TLC.