Here is my question of the day: how many selfies have you taken, or how often do you take a selfie and post it?

Here’s my own answer. I’ve done it twice. In forever. And I’m old. Once I took a selfie of my hands for a blog post. The other one I took because I wanted to promote a piece of jewelry I bought from a friend and love wearing.

I don’t get the obsession with selfies, or should I say the selfie-obsession. Is it an indication of insecurity? Are you posting now so you can remember what you look like at a particular time in life? Are you afraid you’ll forget? And where to they go, these selfie images? Do they sit in the cloud waiting to be resurrected fifty years hence when you want to see what you looked like in 2016 or are they ephemeral memories lost in the plethora of posts on a Facebook timeline?

And what about travel selfies? Every place people of a certain age now visit has a selfie with them standing in front of the place. Is that to prove they were there? In days gone by photos were taken on vacations for sure. But they might have one or two of the vacationer standing in front of the Taj Mahal or by the Ganges, the rest of the vacation photos are of sights seen and not to be forgotten. Not so today. The memory treasured is not of the view but of the person.

Maybe it’s good to have hundreds of photos of yourself. I have a few photos of how I looked over the years. The majority were taken for publicity purposes when I was in business and had no alterative. Others were with friends at events or trips. Mostly I’ve been camera shy, don’t like to have my picture taken. I don’t know why I have such reluctance, but there it is.

It is nice to see my younger face sometimes, especially after I look in the mirror at my now old one. But a few photos suffice. I can’t imagine sitting and looking at hundreds of images of myself from years gone by.

Think about this. The mind is a wonderful camera. It stores not only images but also the emotions and intellectual responses felt at the time. I see a picture of me with my late husband and it makes me feel happy all over again. There aren’t too many, neither of us liked being photographed other than with friends or at parties, but there are enough to relive the pleasure when I want. Somehow, if there were too many, I’m not sure the effect would be as powerful. But for certain, the emotions surrounding recorded memories are diluted by the obsession to take the pictures, removing oneself out of the moment of pleasure into the selfie mode of necessity to record. Maybe sometimes it’s better to just relax and enjoy the moment while you’re in it.

What do you yourselfie think?