For Happiness in Heaven Give Me Google
When I die, I do not want to go to heaven and then watch the events of my life unfold on the big screen. I’m sorry, but I don’t. I’ve lived it once, and, quite frankly, a good portion of my life has been rather boring. For instance, who really wants to watch themselves sleep? Every night? For their entire lifetime? No thank you.
That’s not to say that I wouldn’t like to see select moments in my life. I just want the ability to select what moments I see. That’s why I hope that when Google’s inventors get to heaven, God gets them busy designing what will come to be known as Google Life. (I know that God could make it himself, but I think he’s probably got better things to do. And since the Google guys are so good at what they do…you know: Google Mail, Google Earth, Google Maps…they deserve to spearhead the Google Life project.)
It’s got potential, people! Think about it: You know those situations where you’re having a conversation with your mom and you say, “Remember that time when we saw John Denver at the fair?” And then your mom says, “No, we never saw John Denver. You must be thinking of someone else.” But you still feel fairly certain you saw John Denver and your mom is crazy? That’s where Google Life comes in. You type in as much information as you think you remember—John Denver concert when I was 10—and Google Life searches through your entire life and brings up relevant results. And then you watch the video version (on that big screen, with heavenly picture and sound) and you and your mom both know who is right and who is crazy.
(Okay, I admit it—I’d really like to have Google Life right now. I mean, my entire generation is so used to instant answers to most who, what, where, when, why, and how questions…it’s frustrating that we can’t have the same instant gratification for these questions in our own lives. However, I recognize that since God’s got exclusive access to a free and unbiased account of my life, I’ll have to wait for heaven in order to get it.)
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- Ramblings
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So here’s my (beta) version of Google Life, with some historical background.
In about Spring of 2005, I was sitting in a workshop on creating and proposing development projects. The training took place in Otavalo, Ecuador, where I had been living for several months. As worthwhile as this workshop was, it was failing to hold my attention, and I began to lose myself in my own thoughts and the trajectory of my life. As usual, when I tried to think of life in abstraction, memories remained distant. I needed context. Perhaps because I was living abroad at that moment, I began to think of the different places I had lived. This was easy enough, as the list consisted of several cities in the US, several in the Dominican Republic and one in Ecuador. This list evolved quickly to include all of the different houses where I had lived in those cities. The evolution continued as I added memorable places in those cities, as well as places I had traveled to, fragments of childhood and adult vacations, niches from my neighborhood growing up, my grandparents’ farms, the school playground, etc. Soon, it became an attempt to identify anywhere I had ever been. Still, some memories remained vague and I needed additional context.
This concreteness came as I remembered and named anyone and everyone that I had shared those places with, roommates, traveling companions, friends, acquaintances, girlfriends, crushes, family, etc. By combining people and places, I uncovered long hidden realms of memory, caches of things we had done together. This wasn’t an exercise in nostalgia or sentimentality. It became a collection of triggers* that illuminated the direction and shape of my life.
Over time, I chronologized the list and I continue to add to it whenever I remember. I’ve never been a fan of diaries (mundane collections of daily events), but I am a huge proponent of journals (meaningful reflections on life experiences). When I find the time, I try to parlay this bare bone version of Google Life, this collection of people and places and what happened there, into more detailed and finely remembered reflections.
So start your Google Life now, it’s even searchable. Though, there are no pop-up video versions of relevant results.
*www.amazon.com/Triggering-Town-Lectures-Essays-Writing/dp/0393309339