On Nostalgia
The other morning, I queued up a playlist for my commute to the office – a carefully crafted selection of tracks from the early 2000s. At lunch, while swiping through stories on social media, my feed was dominated by concert videos from bands of yesteryear, shared by friends. Later, as I prepared dinner, I listened to a rewatch podcast by the stars of one of my favourite shows from twenty years ago.
I have a deep affection for nostalgia, but lately I’ve been thinking about the amount of space I let it occupy in my life and how this fondness for revisiting the past is shaping my future.
On the surface, nostalgia can be a beautiful thing – I genuinely still love many of these songs, books and memories 20 years later! There’s a predictability and sense of security it offers, which is comforting in an increasingly uncertain present. The allure of nostalgia goes beyond the surface too. The burned CD that played during a spontaneous trip with your friends as a newly licensed driver occupies a space where seemingly ordinary moments were milestones. I appreciate that nostalgia allows you to honour that time in your life and the person you were when it felt like the future was boundless.
The discomfort I‘ve begun to feel about nostalgia is that by default it’s competing for the most precious thing I have, time. Time spent reminiscing, rewatching and revisiting the past is time that I’m not open to be moved by anything else. That’s a problem, because I want to be moved by and love so many more things in the time I have left. I’m reminded of a poignant line by Charles Wright,
“What I like” isn’t what’s good for me. “What I like” is familiar, what’s good for me is foreign and unknown.
Where do I find the balance between my desire to savour the past and the necessity to thrive in the present? There’s a very specific feeling you experience; when you are surrounded by old friends, when you stand in your childhood room, or when you come across something you created years ago. It’s a sensation that grounds you and fills you with gratitude. An appreciation as much for the past as where it has brought you. I want to use that feeling as a guiding principle. Not relying on nostalgia as a crutch or a means of postponing today's responsibilities, but as an intentional exercise in appreciating who I've become and what I'm still capable of.
I know where to find the past if I need it but for today, I’m going to hit pause on my 00’s greatest hits playlist and spend some time seeing what drives my spirit in this moment.
Teenage me had no idea he’d end up writing about nostalgia one day.
If this made you think, pass it along. Good ideas deserve good company.
