Busyness is the currency that Cambridge students trade on. Lectures, supervisions, committee meetings, formals. Focus groups, sports matches, launch events, pub trips. These are abstracted away into brightly coloured chunks on my calendar, and life becomes a series of neatly divided half an hour blocks. I transfer my time into a low interest savings account, and wonder why my investment fails to make a good return. This is the tender that props up our failing economy.

I have my answer to the inevitable “how’s this term going?” memorised. “Busy, but good.” “Intense, but I’m enjoying it” “Lots going on, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.” And while these answers are true, I secretly hate that they play into that game of Cambridge busyness, and sometimes I question whether or not this is the best way to live.

The rapid blur of life makes us desperate to record every moment. I’m guilty of it. The BeReal notification arrives like a herald in the night. My One-Second-Everyday app lies patiently in wait for another snippet of my day. On uneventful days we mourn the emptiness of our Instagram stories. What is this world if not an image capture experiment?

There have been a few times in the past couple of years where the landscape before me seems too good not to frame. Too beautiful not to have it saved in my phone to come back to again and again. Yet, it’s at those most photo-worthy moments that something inside urges me not to. In those moments, I have wanted desperately to take a picture, to build an edifice in the shape of a high res photo, and know that that moment was captured. But always within me there is something begging me to resist. What was it?

Who needs the brain when the cloud does it all for you?

Some Native American cultures become wary of the camera, seeing it as a tool that would whisk away your soul in the moment you pressed the shutter. And there is some truth in this. You lose a piece of the moment, or force the creation of something artificial, one remove away from reality, if you take a picture to store somewhere else. The phone externalises memory and in so doing parcels away memorable emotion. Who needs the brain when the cloud does it all for you?

I’m reminded of the story of Jesus’ transfiguration in the gospels (indulge me a biblical comparison – I’m a theology student, okay?). Jesus and his closest mates – Peter, James, and John – ascend a mountain and are shown a blinding vision. Christ’s clothes turn white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them (Mark 9:3). He speaks with Moses and Elijah on that mountain, and the dumbstruck disciples stand in awe. Then Peter has to open his big gob: “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Matthew 17:4).

At first sight, it doesn’t seem that Peter has done anything wrong. But God interrupts in a booming voice, and Peter’s timid offering drowns into the background. Why, though? Some biblical commentators think he is too concerned with capturing the moment, too eager to speak at a time which should be revered in silence. And in his capturing attempt, he had cut in on the moment itself, jarring the divine display of Jesus’ goodness with his man-made creation.

And don’t we all do this? Stutter into speech what should be left unsaid. Or whip out a phone at a scene that could have just been left in my head. Maybe it’s just me? It seems like the desperation to remember does nothing but make me forget. However, there have been a few times when I’ve recognised that a tabernacle of a photo is not something I should build. That I must merely look on with wonder, and see what emerges.

And in those moments, I have decided to take a picture in my mind. The moon glowing bright against an ocean of deep blue clouds, John’s peeking turrets clasping hands with that night sky. A red-beaked bird swooping from branches as I walk up to Sidgwick Site in the cold dappled light. The mist rising from a whispering River Cam, as King’s looks on, unflinching. A melody of laughter erupting from the dinner table in the basement of my grotty student house. My roommate and I sitting in a gorgeous cup of silence, as she writes her essay, and I write this article. Every once in a while, I force myself to conjure up these images again. To remind myself that they happened to me, just me, and they exist just for me to see.

I was hesitant about writing this, in fact, about sharing these snapshots that have formed the camera roll of my mind during these past couple of years at university. I wanted to do them justice. As much as I love words, I know they won’t capture the colours that ring bright and true in my head, the nostalgia that rises to the top of my throat as I rifle through my files of memories. I think part of the thrill of deciding not to take a photo is knowing that there is a risk you could forget. But for the beauty of that fragility, for the rush of remembering something whose image only you have, that is a risk I’m willing to take.