Tavern Tales | Losing the Most Precious Thing

A few weeks ago, I attended the Alpha course organized in collaboration with a Christian church at the University of Vancouver.

The main purpose of attending, of course, was for the free dinner, to meet new friends, and to immerse myself in an English-speaking environment.

After the dinner chat, the course would watch a video related to a topic. After the video, everyone would form a small circle to discuss based on the topic.

One of the topics discussed was "Have you ever lost something precious? What is that thing?" We determined the order of answers by spinning bottle.

Lost the most precious thing

My memories are sealed inside. And the feeling of amnesia.

A girl named Zhen sitting next to me was selected by the spin bottle.

She hooked her hair behind her ears with her hands and stared at the ground for three seconds.

With a deep breath and a painful tone, she said,

"I lost my previous phone."

Everyone made a sad sound for her.

She continued,

"The phone is not really missing, the phone is still there, but because of some operating reasons, it was locked. I took it to the Apple company, but they couldn't unlock it for me. Now the unlock time of it needs to take longer than my life to open."

"The most important thing is, I lost all the photos in my phone."

"I can't find all the photos from my five years of using my phone."

"Losing these photos, it's like I've lost the past five years."

A part of myself seems to have been lost in the locked phone.

In the era of advanced technology, our memories are preserved through photos, posts, videos, and chat records.

Earlier, the hassle of changing phones might be the main reason many people are hesitant to get a new one.

Because changing phones means that you might lose your LINE conversation records, and it may be difficult to transfer contacts, albums, etc. in your phone...

The same goes for changing computers.

For Zhen, it's sad that her phone can't be used, but losing the memories of time is a deeper pain.

Such pain is like losing memory.

Do you also use your phone to record your life? Have you ever regretted not documenting your life more in the past?

Or do you think these are all fleeting, and you don't need to preserve memories through these things?

Graduation Ceremony

My father is a photographer who loves to take pictures and has documented a lot of my life since I was young.

Of course, he wouldn't miss any of my graduation ceremonies.

Because each of my graduation ceremonies is a unique graduation ceremony in our lives.

I still remember my high school graduation ceremony.

Each class chose a theme for their outfits. Our class chose the theme of the Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service.

At the ceremony, although I wasn't any important role that day, just a graduate as ordinary as can be.

But I think in my parents' eyes, I was still shining.

They left many beautiful memories of the ceremony for me.

However, the afternoon of the next day after getting home.

I remember the golden sunlight fell in the living room through the small leaf olive tree.

My father rushed down the stairs from upstairs, the sound of his slippers hitting the stairs hard, the sound of running hurriedly, still etched in my memory.

"What to do?" He asked me standing at the corner of the stairs from the first to the second floor.

I looked up in the living room, full of confusion, and replied, "What's wrong?"

"I accidentally formatted the photos. All the photos are gone!"

We began to look up various articles on the Internet such as "What to do if photos are formatted".

With some clues, we took the memory card, my father rode our small motorcycle, and I sat in the back.

We went to the small town of Hukou, asking each communication shop one by one if they could fix it.

The whole town of Hukou couldn't find a shop that could solve our problem.

My father was very anxious and wanted to retrieve the memories of the special day stored in that memory card.

He was not reconciled. We went home, switched to a car, and drove to Hsinchu.

In the end, we found a shop specializing in memory card repair near the National Tsing Hua University.

I remember the corners of his eyes, as small as mine, were relaxed at the moment we found hope.

I don't know why my mother wasn't home that day.

I don't remember how much it cost to fix that memory.

I remember that we agreed not to tell my mother first that day.

It wasn't until several weeks later, when we got the repaired memory card back, that we confessed to our mother about this.

If you ask me what the expression of regaining a lost thing is, I think it was written in my father's eyes that day.