How Whatsapp Taught Me To Let Go

Like many of my peers of this generation, Whatsapp is my life. I probably communicate more words everyday through that app than I do out of my own mouth. And you'll know you're the same when its notification buzz takes over your entire mind and body whenever it comes up, whatever time of day it is. I think I need it so much so that I feel physically and mentally unsafe without it being within arm's reach.

As much as I hate to admit it, I'd like to think that I wouldn't go crazy without my phone, but who am I kidding? I can't put it down. And one fateful, tragic night, a bug had caused my phone to reset completely and wiped its memory clean - my Whatsapp conversation history being one of the unfortunate casualties. I can hear the gasps now. Yes, I am slowly recovering from the emotional trauma. I'd like to thank you all in advance for your thoughts and prayers through these tough times.

Jokes aside, I genuinely felt sad and frustrated about it. It's stupid, and most likely a somewhat overreaction. But to think I had lost all the conversations I've had with all my friends and family really struck me hard. All the jokes, catching up, and heartfelt discussions... just gone. Erased forever and lost in the digital ether, never to be recovered again. How could I ever relive those connections I shared with all these people?

My mum is my biggest subscriber.

But this made me ponder: if I could, would I? Prior to the tragedy, I always had those conversations stored on my phone. Did I ever once go back to them? Truth be told, hardly, but yes - for one particular person, often even. But no one else. And because, embarrassingly, it was the prime example of me living in the past.

See, when we have normal face-to-face interactions, we live in the moment. We experience people and we experience life. We create memories, and that bit of nugget of information is stored in our imperfect brains. And when we choose to relive those moments, we do so through whatever we can mentally recall. However, that recall is blurry. It's filtered by our emotions and faded by time. And every time we turn back and look again, some detail is changed or missing. Fiction becomes fact, and assumptions become the truth.

With Whatsapp, those moments are captured perfectly, word for word. Nothing is misconstrued, and perhaps it is this immaculate snapshot that I felt I lost. But the only time I missed it was when I thought I had nothing left in the present. For the majority of my Whatsapp contacts, I never once went back to what we said. But for this one person, reading back previous conversations meant I could perfectly relive moments of the past.

But that's not how life works. Life is transient. Moments come and go, and the beauty of the world is that nothing is permanent. Stagnancy is boring. We progress with all the people we know, for better or for worse, and that is what makes our individual relationships so unique. We go from strangers to family. We talk, and we learn, and we grow. We love, and we hate, and then we love again. We don't cycle seasons; we age.

Living in the past is no way to live at all, no matter what tinted filters you see it through. To truly appreciate your history is to live the present with the context of the past. What has happened before will always be important, but it shouldn't be where your head and heart is at, because that is something you will never return to. The good news, however, is that there is so much more in the future - better things and worse things. And you'll never find out if you're stuck in the past.

I feel like a lot of my friendships are based on mutual insult.

So here's the twist: my Whatsapp got wiped months ago. And that day, I was honestly at my wit's end. It really ruined my week. But it happened again about a week ago (maybe the real lesson is that I need a new phone). And yes, it annoyed me that I lost some pretty awesome pics, but you know what? It didn't suck nearly as much. I may have lost some text, but I didn't lose any of my relationships. My friends and family are still very much around; they didn't get deleted in the process. And I'll make new conversations and new memories, and everyday, I'll create something worth remembering.

I realised I stopped reading back my conversations with that one contact since the first time I lost my Whatsapp, because I learnt that even if the text exists, the conversation doesn't. It was fleeting, just like everything else. It was created at the time, and it finished at the time. And now, I'll start and end new conversations with that contact about the present. I won't soon forget our past, but if only to build a new future.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, understand that nothing can capture the past so perfectly that it extends its existence - an app, photo, memory, or otherwise. I'm not saying you should completely neglect your past, but don't let it stop you from living in the present, like I did.

Also, back up your Whatsapp history every so often.