Would he be proud of me today?

How easily we surrender our dreams and reinvent. I feel I owe an apology to my younger self. Thankfully, it’s not too late to start again

- Charles Assisi

My two daughters belong to Gen Z (the generation now aged 13 to 28).

Lately, they've been walking around with digital cameras; the same kinds of Canons and Sonys I had in the 90s.

They like the washed-out light and grainy texture, they say. They have moved past the scores of filters available on each phone and want that first take: the unflattering angle, closed eyes, uneven light. They call it authentic. I initially found it bewildering.

Now in my early 50s, I belong to Gen X.1 like to think of ours as the generation that invented personal digital curation. We were the first to sand down every rough edge of our lives before we shared it via a fledgling internet. We presented only the Photo-shopped versions of our vacations, our lives, ourselves. We saw it as “winning”.

Yet, when my daughters show me an underexposed street scene, I see the earnestness in it. It feels more real. I've begun to wonder: How did reality become something we had to work “backwards” to reach?