I was showing pictures to a friend on my computer. The screen froze, faded to blue, and died. Everything I'd saved for the past 5 years was gone.
My hard drive crashed on my first lap top in college, but I wanted to believe that this time my information was indestructible. So, when I came to the realization that I’d lost everything – my photos, my articles, my saved files that marked a moment in time I wanted to save, I didn’t even get upset. I knew there was no point. And when the computer store asked me if I wanted to pay the extra $300 to attempt to recover anything, I said no, because it seemed like too much to trade in for my technological diary.
And then, a miracle happened. I got a call from the computer store saying that, in fact, nothing had been erased, and that my hard drive had not crashed, rather the small internal chord that connects hard drive to computer had a malfunction that they fixed and everything was there.
Relieved, I took my computer back and I opened it up to look at everything I might have lost. I looked at every picture that I forgot that I had – every image of humans who were important enough for me to take their picture. And I looked at every reflection I ever wrote - some that were too personal to ever share, but that I saved for myself. And looked at all of my music - all the songs that took me to moments I would have otherwise forgot.
And I came to a realization in looking over it all: if we're not searching for the things we're missing, we might never even know they don't exist.
I wish we had an external hard drive for each minute, to save all the things that might change the course of our existence, or to save the things we never knew we lost, especially the people in the universe who we don't see through distance and time and experience.
My computer malfunctioned, and when it was returned to me I was given back life’s records that reminded me of the things I had promised myself to pursue or the things I had to keep to remember all of the stuff in life that I value as important. It gave me back minutes I might have lost, because everything we don't remember becomes nothing and everything we don't see never existed.
Just another reminder to keep searching.
