On Nostalgia

And other such things

Hello, all! It's been a bit since I first posted...good gracious, it's kind of hard to start this. I feel like John Watson, trying to start his blog. "Nothing ever happens to me..."

Only in my case, that's not true.
I'm a bit of an idealist (if by "a bit", the English language means "a lot"). I find interest in anything, if I take the time to try. Often, I don't take the time to try, really, but I'm almost never really bored. As a writer, it's easy to disappear into another world when I am bored. But just as it's easy to get lost in another world, I also find myself getting lost in the past, swept up in some big, unexplainable feeling known collectively to the world as nostalgia.
I asked my dad what his definition of "nostalgia" was. He answered:

"The thought of or longing for the past."

Which, to my delight, was a much simplified version of Dictionary.com's definition:

"a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time: a nostalgia for his college days."

I find that nostalgia in itself is very easy to evoke in myself. A great many things can trigger it. As I sit here listening to Phil Collin's Strangers Like Me from the Disney movie Tarzan, I find myself in the midst of many, many fond emotions, all directed towards my best friend. Connected with memories from when I was somewhere around eleven or twelve years old and dancing about her living room to the music, to the laughable situation in which we found ourselves hopelessly lost while driving to a Bible study, and so turned up the music in her car - it gives me an odd contented sensation. But I wonder about nostalgia. Everybody experiences it...the triggers can be wide and varied. Today, for example: I was saying goodbye to a friend who had visited from another state, and as she said goodbye, she pulled back and whispered,
"Just one last thing - you were fantastic. Really fantastic. And you know what? So was I."Those are the last words of Doctor Who's protagonist before he regenerates into his tenth form (I'll blab on about the explanation of Doctor Who later). As stated before, I love that show, and it elicited both tears and laughter from me when mixed with the thought that I wouldn't see her for a while.
Another trigger could be as simple as the word "ducks" with one friend or the name "Sir Fred" - don't ask, inside jokes are odd - with another.
But why is it so easy for us to remember, dwell on, and get stuck in the past?


People say "hindsight is 20/20", but I think that's only true in some instances. Looking back, I can see where the guy I liked was a player, when I should have said something to a friend and didn't, and how I wouldn't have made that choice had I known what I know now. But when we're not looking at our mistakes, we tend to look at the past through rose-colored glasses.


When I think of happy times, I don't think of the surrounding circumstances. I remember meeting with friends and laughing. I don't remember feeling excluded at times, or the fact that that year was utterly miserable and I didn't tell anyone, or the guilt I carried with me at that point. I remember laughing. I remembered smiling at a joke. I remember a hug and a warm cup of coffee. Not the bad.


Nostalgia is a mental filter we willingly put on ourselves - subconsciously editing out the bad and touching up the good. The joke seems funnier. The laughter heartier. The coffee more delicious. The friends closer. My nostalgia makes my memories brighter, and that's why it's so easy to get lost in the good memories of the past.


Humans are an odd species, you know. They're the only creatures on Earth who try to live both in the past and the future all at once, and ignore the present. But it's hard to see the present in the rosy light of nostalgia or our imagination about the future?

So what makes the present worth it?

Simple, really.


We're in the present. Unfortunately, we cannot go back to those spun-gold memories that nostalgia provides, or skip forward to the rosy visions of the future. We are here, in the present, living for now. Not living in a time not our own is hard. But the concept of living for now is prevalent everywhere you turn.

"Today share one more smile, today pray one more time, today drink one more tear, today live one more life, today see one more dream. Who knows, there may be no more tomorrow."
-Unknown

"Sometimes there is no next time, no time outs, no second chance, sometimes it's just now or never."
-Unknown

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."
-Albert Einstein

"Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."
-Matthew 6:34

Today is worth more than tomorrow, because tomorrow is not yet here. Today is worth more than yesterday, because yesterday has been lived and discarded. Nostalgia is pleasant at times. Hope is admirable. But to live today, in the present...that is extraordinary. Because nobody does that anymore.

-Sorry for the rambling,
Jess