Nostalgia has long played a substantial role in the human condition, and our current generation is certainly no exception. The Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov once wrote that ‘one is always at home in one’s past,’ and this remains just as true today as it ever has. Even for myself, I can admit that the intoxicating lure of nostalgia has had its effect on me for as long as I can remember.
But what is it about the remembrance of things past that seems so powerful? What is that lure, exactly? More importantly, why are some of us so willing to be captured by that melodious feeling; allowing its mysterious song to serenade us into a realm which – clearly – is not the actual past but rather is an illusory replica of something that has already been? In my opinion, it’s probably something as simple as the fact that the past is relatively complete. There’s something cozy about the idea that the past can be so easily rendered into definition, whereas the present is viciously uncertain in nature and, for that matter, much harder to navigate. In many senses, you could argue that the difficulties of the past are more easily put into perspective. The complexities of today, however, are yet to be resolved – and that’s what makes living in the present more difficult.
Granted, most of us aren’t so delusional to assume that everything about the past was utopian either. Every one of us can remember periods of pain, difficulty and loss. But the difference between suffering those things then versus now is that, now being in the aftermath of those trials, we have the luxury of having experienced the fact that life does go on. Somehow, our lives continued to unfold and so many of those difficult moments that made then seem so hard are now irrelevant.
Immediately, this gives us a better context for anxiety and paranoia. As of today, approximately one third of American adults are reporting symptoms of anxiety, and the overall rate of anxious disorders in general has increased 3.5 times since before the pandemic (according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey). We can speculate on what the specific reasons for this escalation might be but, at the end of the day, it’s probably a constellation of causes – each of which are deserving of further scrutiny on their own.
Regardless of the different causes, it goes without saying that uncertainty itself seems a strong, common denominator that lies at the root of it all. Uncertainty brings no promise of success. If anything, it suggests the very real possibility of loss. In our current era, we wrestle with the granular uncertainties of personal income and the evolution of the market economy, but there is also the ever-growing question of global stability and even the welfare of the planet itself. Even if we’re able to suspend our paranoia for a little while, the media is quick to remind us of all the things we’re supposed to be terrified of.
It’s not surprising, then, that when reflecting on the past we find a feeling of comfort. There’s a stability there which seems elusive from our current circumstances. Even our former problems seem now to be somehow obsolete. And our brains are so sophisticated in their ability to push the messy parts into the background while, at the same time, highlighting the sweeter morsels of our remembrance into such a distorted cocktail that we are left imagining them to be false norm of days gone by. Unconsciously, we select the good and we omit the bad. Worse yet, we re-interpret the bad as something strangely ideal; blinding our view of things that may have been more pathological than we care to remember. As the French writer Marcel Proust observed, ‘the remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.’ Indeed, retreating to the past is no antidote to our current day problems and concerns. It is akin to a psychic opium, leaving no lasting trace of actual healing, and only a lingering sensation of having taken a brief exit from what’s still in front of us.
Maturity of mind, however, requires us to live and wrestle with the complexities of the now. Granted, this is hard to do sometimes, but by channeling our energies into facing the uncertain nature of today’s living experience we prepare ourselves for much better rewards. After all, nobody feels any lasting joy through distraction. It just doesn’t feed the soul. Perhaps King Solomon said it best in the book of the Ecclesiastes: “Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For you do not inquire wisely concerning this.”
Facing the now means accepting the slippery nature of certainty and choosing, instead, to be curious about what’s unfolding in our lives; in the world at large even.
The strange and beautiful thing about honest curiosity is the way in which it breeds creativity. Pining for the past is a confusing intoxicant, but daring to lean forward into the murky waters of the deep is an act which emboldens the spirit and readies our resolve for actually living our life out in the open. In my opinion, curiosity is something that actually becomes the key to experiencing the present moment in a way that nostalgia can only ever pretend to accomplish regarding the past. After all, nostalgia is all about the feeling, right? It’s about the emotion of remembering something in a certain way, a certain context, that comforts the mind. In the end, however, nostalgia is only ever just that: a feeling. It doesn’t really solve anything, nor does it stimulate any drive for solving our current difficulties and challenges. It certainly doesn’t help build our future. It merely serves as a brief resting place for the contemplation of a half-reality that is no longer attainable.
Being curious and fully open about the present (as opposed to hanging on to the past) allows us to observe the texture of our surroundings in a much better way than nostalgia can ever achieve. It is a simple art form which grants us the opportunity to see the marvels of what’s happening in our lives as they are being played out in real time. Even during the so-called ‘bad’ moments of life, our sharpened ability to simply observe what is happening around us can be an experience of inexplicable liberty, mainly because we are choosing to accept the unavoidable reality that life does something remarkably beautiful.
It unfolds.
And as our lives unfold, our willingness to release our nostalgic addictions can actually yield a sense of wonder about what’s going on around us. When we can truly see the ‘collateral beauty’ of our personal circumstances as well as the evolving nature of the world around us, we gift ourselves with opportunities to notice all kinds of little gems and rich features of the now. We can observe things which, in years to come, we may even long for.
By all means, let’s have our honest feelings of nostalgia. But let’s be careful not to surrender our whole sense of wellness in them, hoping for some kind of antidote to the necessary complexities of real life. If anything, let’s enjoy the memories and the ideals of the past, but not at the sacrifice of living in the current hour of our existence. And if, in the quiet remembrances of things gone by, we can actually take something worthy and valuable and then tangibly bring it forward into the present, even better.
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