When you walk into my apartment, you won’t see much decoration. I lack the creative eye — and desire — to adorn my walls with mementos and ornaments. I only have a few keepsakes I brought along with me from my hometown to my new-found home.
As someone who doesn’t consider himself materialistic, I don’t keep many physical items for reasons beyond practicality or sentimentality. Some of these items include a gifted picture frame with a photograph of me and my girlfriend, a flag of my favorite football team since I was a child and gaming consoles to connect me with my high school friends as well as some others.
One collection in my possession I would consider unique to me, however, is a file holder in which I keep old Sports Illustrated magazines I found special in one way or another. Whether it is the design, the story or the moment, if I feel compelled to save it, then I will file it away for the future.
But why do I keep them? If it’s the design, couldn’t I find the images online? If it’s the story, couldn’t I read it online? If it’s the moment, couldn’t I find the videos online?
Stories are best appreciated in the moment. The print copies of these magazines are the closest things I have to this memory; they honor the past in a way that’s tangible and not just viewed on a screen behind a sequence of ones and zeroes. It’s a way for me to own a piece of history.
Online copies can help preserve the moments I never was able to keep myself or provide additional content unavailable in print format. Print copies preserve history that can be kept in my hands.
To me, it’s no different than owning a picture frame. Photographs hold moments and stories eternally in a tangible way. We put them on our walls to decorate our lives with them. We choose our favorite stories to show off in our homes, and we make it easier to look at and reminisce on our memories of them.
If the value of existence is greater than or equal to tangible value, the practicality of saving every photo on a hard drive would be far more favorable. But, we don’t. They’re not equal. That’s why we frame photos. It goes beyond the idea of tradition. It’s the ability to trap a moment in time like a living fossil in amber.
So, in my room I have a few items. I have Sports Illustrated magazines I saved with various covers such as UConn star guard Paige Bueckers winning Gatorade Player of the Year in high school, the Chicago Cubs celebrating the moment they broke the 71-year-old Curse of the Billy Goat, former New England Patriots receiver Julian Edelman making the improbable catch to overcome the Atlanta Falcons’ infamous 28-3 lead and more than a dozen more stories that define sports history in different ways to me. And, I have that picture of my girlfriend and me, because the moments worth saving and remembering are the moments worth physically owning.