My close work buddy Greg and I talk a lot about nostalgia.
Now, I know what you're thinking: He's talking about nostalgia again? This guy can't let it go! But bear with me.
Anyway, he made a very interesting statement that served as great food for thought, and has really stuck with me. He said: "Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present. The name of this denial is 'Golden Age Thinking' - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one's living in. It's a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present. - Greg 25:17."
The first thing I did was try to see if the number he chose somehow correlated with something in the real world. Alas, I found nothing. Then I actually thought about his words. What I found was that I (sorry Greg!) don't 100% agree with the statement.
See, what I think that Greg is talking about is a certain kind of nostalgia, because I believe that nostalgia comes in many different shapes and sizes. It's not so cut and dry that just one definition can serve it.
I believe that nostalgia serves great purpose - in small doses (like coffee). Nostalgia can teach us about the mistakes that we have made in our past, and help us to walk on with a sense of what pitfalls we ought to avoid in the future. Nostalgia and memory are the great teachers because they teach us about ourselves. When we ignore the lessons that they are trying to teach us, well that's our bad and that's where we see the people who seem bent on making the same mistakes over and over again. And, to me, it's very sad to watch these people spin their wheels. I want to say: "Don't you see that you're just going in circles?" But I can't, because it's not my place. I think that those people, deep down, know that they are just going in circles but just can't seem to figure out how to get out.
Nostalgia taught me to stop being an emotional coward. A couple years ago fear ran my life; I avoided confrontation like it was my job to. I avoided it so much that I avoided the very people with whom I needed to have said confrontations. The result was much, much more damaging than it would have been if I had had the courage and guts to speak up and face my challenges head-on. I might have gone on to be a happier healthier person. However, I was too great a coward, and I let myself go on being a coward. I made the mistake of avoiding conflict just enough times that I ended up hurting everyone around me, and then myself worst of all.
Now, however, I meet confrontation and problems head on. I refuse to back down until the problem is resolved. I can't say I've truly stopped being an emotional coward - I still feel my hands shake, my mouth goes dry, my heart thumps, my head spins, and I kind of feel like I'm leaving my body - but I don't let that fear hold me back the way it used to. I've learned the consequence of not fighting for what's right and for what I love.
Trust me, Amanda can confirm it. We bicker and argue plenty, but it is (almost) always productive and our relationship continues to grow day by day as a result. I may not have the courage, but I now have the ability to fight for us, to stand up for myself, and to fight for the things that I believe in. That is pretty cool. And the best part is that standing up for myself doesn't push people away nearly as much as I always feared it would. In fact, it seems to draw people closer.
The problems (and I think Greg's definition) arise when nostalgia becomes an obsession; when it's so great that we lose sight of the here and now - of the real world. I've been a party (read: victim) to that as well. I'd be lying if I said I weren't. It's entirely possible that he made the aforementioned statement as a passive-aggressive way of jogging my thoughts and making me realize I was being a turd.
I think that when nostalgia really takes a hold - and I mean really - on someone, it becomes impossible for that someone to engage with the world and people around them. Memory becomes their new reality, and they get so wrapped up in romanticizing the past that the present completely passes them by. They can even make themselves mourn for the past.
This, of course, is not healthy.
I've been very nostalgic lately - very reflective on my days at Bard. This nostalgia has been so severe that I have vivid flashbacks to memories that I didn't even realize I had - things so minor that I'm like "did that really happen?" Yet in this state, these minor things become so inflated that they seem like monumental events. I can recall with detail almost every memory from Bard. Same goes with my visits to New York City (Readers: Oh God, not that again). I can even recall every single experience I had with City of Heroes, which I discovered while at Bard and played fervently until it was shut down. I'm now in the process of writing a book that centers around nostalgia and the past years. This nostalgia is indeed a denial of the present.
That said, it is not a painful present, as Greg puts it. These days I am in are wonderful days that I would trade for nothing. The most painful thing I am dealing with right now is my hypochondriasis, which I think has been triggered by nostalgia and anxiety.
Well wonderful, but not perfect, days, I will admit. Nothing is perfect, and going into anything with the expectation of perfection is doomed to disaster.
I think that all of this looking back has triggered something very powerful, and that something very powerful is why I chose the song that I chose for today. There is a line in Edge of Desire that resonates with me, even if not a single other one does: "There, I just said it: I'm scared you'll forget about me."
I have an intense fear of being forgotten. Whether it was triggered by this nostalgic phase, or this nostalgic phase triggered the fear is something I may never know. However, I think that I view Bard as a time where I was important, and I was doing big things in my life. I was playing music, I was making new friends every day, I was writing books, and I was a Peer Counselor (Bardian for RA). I was going to classes, and doing well in them to boot! There was a lot going on at Bard and I felt like I was in the thick of it. I was important, even if much of that was self-appointed importance.
Since graduating, I feel like I have not necessarily lived up to the expectations that I set forth for myself in my Senior Year. Maybe that's my fault, and I set the bar too high for myself. Even so, I remember my goals, and I didn't think that they were so lofty that I could not achieve them. Naturally, one day I started thinking, and when I start thinking bad things tend to happen, because I think too much. My plan was to get a job right out of school (check), get a car (check, love you Stella), get a debit card (check), move to the City (...wait...), get my book published (uhhh nope), and find and obtain a writing job (nada). Doing the math, I realized my hit rate was 50%.
Facebook does bad things to self confidence, it really does. When you look around and say "oh, so and so is doing such and such," you can't help but compare the success of your peers to the apparent lack of success of yourself. But then again I think it comes down to what you view as success. I view success less as achieving your dreams and more as shooting for them. What I see around me is people not only shooting for their dreams, but also hitting them! By the way, I cannot emphasize enough how happy I am for them, even as I am remarkably jealous.
Anyway, I think this all started coming to a head when Lynn passed away last September. While his death served as a tremendous emotional trauma to me, it also showed me how huge of an impact he had in his 31 year lifetime. It was touching to see how great of mark he left on the world, and heartbreaking to think of what he could have done with an even longer life. He lived every day to the fullest, and unafraid of death, knowing that God would take him when it was his time. The result was unmistakable.
My reaction was instead to give in to fear.
I saw the impact Lynn had, and I knew that I wanted to have an impact on this world as well. I looked at my own life, and how little I've given to other people, and I became determine to give more. But it was nowhere near as easy as I thought, because the fear crept in that I might die before I had a chance to give enough; that I might pass on before I had the chance to live the full life that I wanted to live. And that's when the hypochondriasis began.
And then the nostalgia. Because with nostalgia I could live in the time when I made an impact in a huge community, I didn't have to focus as much on my lack of an impact in the here and now. We come full circle to where I was the past few months: nostalgic, hypochondriatic, and forever afraid. This is not the life that I want to lead. Greg's statement shook me up and opened my eyes.
I am still nostalgic, and that is something I will work through in the days, weeks, months and years to come. I don't want to be forgotten. I want to remember the past with my friends, but I also want to look to the future. And live in the now. Going to New Jersey and working on Sandy Relief was a breath of fresh air - I did something that made an impact benefitted someone's life other than my own. I want to do more of that. I don't think the fear that I've so deeply engrained in my mind will go away over night, but at least now I can face it and work on moving on.
I look forward to a future that can be bright and beautiful. And I live in a present that already is - every new day, hour and minute is a blessing. I forgot that, but I think I'm starting to remember. If my time is to end early, then I should make the most of it rather than wallowing in fear.
Right?
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