I mainly use the messaging app Signal to talk to my friends.¹ Every thread I have has timed message deletion enabled, because ephemerality is beautiful.

There are more than just privacy benefits. I find I can speak more freely, the storage footprint of my messaging is relatively constant instead of ever growing, and there is beauty in stringing together words into sentences into paragraphs for your friends, and having that information cease to exist after it has fulfilled its purpose.

What purpose does keeping spent words around serve other than to satiate our desire for control over the past. Conversation is not transactional, and need not be recorded in some indelible fashion, it is a collaboration between two or more humans to create meaning through temporarily shared conscious. Why should my words, devoid of the context of the present they were put together in, keep sitting around on spinning hard drives or flash chips somewhere, in my pocket, in Loudoun County, VA, on my laptop, taking power, wasting bits.

So turn on deleting messages. Delete some old emails. Write letters to your friends and then recycle that paper. Our desire to save everything from the present risks disrupting that very present. Maintenance and care are precious, don’t waste them on things that don’t matter. Let things go, or don’t, I’m not your mom.