You’re carrying a Pensieve in your pocket

#findyourstory #cameraroll

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to plunge into a Pensieve à la Harry Potter.

The name for this stone basin conjured up by J. K. Rowling explains what it does. A portmanteau, the word “Pensieve” is a combination of “pensive” and “sieve.” When a witch or wizard dips their head in, they are zipped back to a historical moment as an invisible third-person observer—a perspective that lets them sort and sift through the swirl of thoughts in their mind to uncover hidden connections, patterns, and truths.

I wish I could do that to figure out who took the cookie from the cookie jar (probably my sweet-toothed 2-year-old).

Now, what if I told you that you have your own personal Pensieve right in your pocket (presuming you’re not a Luddite who still relies on a landline)? Indeed, your phone’s camera roll is an enchanted portal into stuff you’ve done previous to the present—that’s a trove for inspiring personal statements if there ever was one!

The problem is, when we sit down to pen down the most defining, meaningful experiences of our life, our memories don’t just come flooding back at the drop of a Sorting Hat. Imagine I asked you, “Tell me every detail about your trip to London last year. Ready, set, go!” You’d probably go “uh…” then stare into space awkwardly for a while. It’s called delayed memory retrieval, folks—and it’s completely normal!

Our memories aren’t stored in our brain as feature films ready to flip on at whim. We need to reconstruct them. And we do that with the help of cues (not queues, although who knows, maybe those work, too, for British people). Photos are cues that can reacquaint you with memories that may have dulled with time:

✤ Example 1: A selfie you took with Big Ben in the soaking rain.

Triggers the story of how, despite planning every aspect of your travel, the weather gods forced you to adapt and find joy in what you couldn’t control.

✤ Example 2: Your first successful cake bake after many failed attempts.

Reminds you of how you became fascinated by culinary chemistry and, by extension, molecular science.

✤ Example 3: A series of 17 blurry-ish snaps you took of a giant harvest moon.

Jogs your memory about the way your love of photography led you to do a research project on the historical linkages between astronomy and agriculture.

So take out your iPhone or Android, and scroll through your digital photo library (or, if you’re a Luddite, flip through your physical photo albums—jokes aside, I’m thrilled these cultural artifacts are now making a comeback).

Do you see any pics with stories behind them? Maybe one of them will make you pensive enough to start writing your most magical college essay.