Screens and frames are (and have always been) a part of our lives, either bluntly or in a more subtle way. With the technology evolving, it seems like they are staying for good since we all carry them with us and can’t live without them as it seems. They took different forms and shapes through generations, but the idea is still the same: To make us feel something when we look inside those four corners. Let it be joy, pride, longing or sorrow.
The first place where someone sees us for the very first time is a small ultrasound screen. That’s even before we are born. A grainy, black and white image of us, nothing more.
Once we arrive and take our first breath on earth, our pictures are taken to be presented in photo frames and photo albums. Some of those pictures are even being carried around in wallets. Well, this is not happening anymore nowadays. Everyone has mobile phones with small screens in their pockets, filled with thousands of pictures that are available to see anytime.
While we are growing up, those mobile phones with small screens (sometimes the slightly bigger ones; tablets) are handed to us to keep us quiet. Our developing brains feel mesmerised by hearing and seeing all the sounds and colours that we have never seen before.
Then we start school and get our very own screens; mobile phones, tablets and laptops. You name it. We scroll aimlessly on those small screens if we find some time off studying on our bigger screens. All our effort for success is for putting yet another frame with a diploma next to our pictures on our parent’s walls, to make them proud.
Once we become adults and leave home for good to start our own lives, we keep spending most of our time in front of different sized screens to make a living. Meanwhile, we never stop staring at our personal small screens while watching Netflix on our big screens at our homes to kill free time and decompress the stress of work.
After years, we get older and we finally retire. For some reason, the medium sized screens, tablets, become more attractive to us again at that age, like we were babies again. It's as if the time goes backwards. Maybe it’s because we start losing our eyesight, who knows. We start reading things in bigger fonts through the frames of our prescription glasses.
Inevitably, we all slowly start losing our health as the years pass by. Now, we find ourselves looking at screens impatiently for our queue numbers to come up in the hospital waiting rooms. While waiting, we try to convince our loved ones that we are ok, by texting or calling them through our personal small screens.
And as everything comes to an end, we are on our deathbeds now. Ironically, in the very same buildings where we took our first breath. Now it’s time for the very last one.The screens that are connected to the machines that are connected to us show totally different visuals and information now. It’s no grainy, black and white image that announces a new life anymore. This time, it’s not something that brings joy.
Like they say, our life flashes before our eyes like a movie on a big screen. The last one that we will ever see. This is the end of our time frames.
Once we leave this world, framed pictures of us are placed in front of our caskets. People pin printed pictures of us on their collars. If we are influential people, we can even get our pictures printed in a newspaper above our obituaries and on our tombstones.
And we live forever in the memories of others, inside those four corners.
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