Living in the past is bad
thing, but so is forgetting it. The past is important and you'd be a
fool to think otherwise. Nostalgia is a phenomenon that I am very
familiar with and which we are all familiar with, at least a little bit.
For me, an autistic who has difficulty both understanding or accessing
his emotions, nostalgia is some of the most ready access I have to
positive emotions. Raw nostalgia is probably not much good for
anything, but if you can harness it, channel it, and learn to focus on
what's good about it while using your rational mind to keep in
perspective and context what needs to be kept in perspective and
context, it can be a powerful way to access positive emotion and know
how one can and ought to live in the present. A discussion of nostalgia
could go all over the place, but I will limit myself to three different
varieties, which I do believe basically cover it. You've got nostalgia
for youth, nostalgia for a time in your life, and nostalgia for
fiction, and they all work a little bit differently. What they have in
common though is a sense of possibility, and, more specifically, an
implied hope. If things were once good or it's possible to think of
things as being so good, then we may make them so. When you get older, nostalgia probably
seems different in important ways, but, as someone who has recently
completed growing up, at this age, it's all about what growing up
entailed, because it entailed so very much and there is so much to draw
upon for the future, which still lies ahead.
We'll start with nostalgia for youth, which is defined, in a general way and to varying degrees, as a time of less responsibility, less disillusionment, and less general worry. There are two important lessons to draw from here. The first is that happiness derived from naivete cannot and ought not be sought again and the second is that being less busy, less cynical, and worrying less do, in fact, make you happier. You don't really want to be a kid again though, because you had fewer rights back then. That didn't matter because you didn't have the responsibilities associated with those rights, but that doesn't mean the tradeoff's uneven. For my part, the rights you get are way better. If someone's annoying you socially as an adult, you get to leave and not be forced to be there by your parents or the government. Bullies are now subject to actual laws and you can get an actual concealed carry license (unless you live in Illinois). Also, you get whatever you want for dinner, whether that's steak, cookies, or spray cheese. Now that we've recognized the negative of youth, what of the positive? Well, disillusionment is about finding out things you loved weren't so awesome or that the world works in horrible ways. Some things, such as romantic love in my own case, are horrible and you just have to move on from them. However, the whole world doesn't suck because, as it turns out, the world is a pretty big place with a lot of stuff in it. If you can get a career you enjoy going, find a place to live you like, and, if you're not me, find love, you don't have get your illusions back because you can be happy with your life as it is. Sure, it's always going to be a compromise, but you can find enough magic in the world to make it worthwhile.
When it comes to nostalgia for a time (or place for our purposes), it's all about matching up the actual version of events with your recorded one. Take Drury from fall of 1999-spring of 2000. You know when Harry Potter is leaving Hogwarts in the first movie and he's euphorically happy with his new life and knowing he'll come back next year? That was me as I walked along campus to my car with my old friend Jon looking back on how awesome the year had been. Harry and I are both being ridiculous though, and for largely the same reason. In Harry's case, he had found out a powerful dark wizard had wanted him dead his whole life and, in fact, murder was attempted again that school year, his best friend had nearly died playing wizard's chess, and he'd been granted his own personal dedicated bully. For my part, I had alienated advisors in two majors, been bullied and intimidated by most members of my group of friends who were sporting a festering misogynistic streak, lost a scholarship to bad grades in political science, had developed a pathetic crush yet again, and ended the semester by destroying my roommate's painstaking drawing of his supervillain headquarters (we became best friends, actually). Why do Harry and I, absent reminders from our sense of logic and our contemporaries, have such a positive vision of our first year? It's because it was the greatest rush of hope for the future we'd ever had. Neither of us believed we'd ever have any friends, so the rush of excitement of having them was amazing enough to cast everything else we experienced in a much more kindly light. How do you apply this? Well, basically it's important to remember why you're nostalgic for a time or a place because it's not about that time or place, not really. Believe me, I've walked around Drury and I'm now just a stranger, so that rules of place. Talking to your peers from the time is all you can do to gauge what the time really was. All that matters and all that you need to worry about recapturing is the positive emotions that that time and place created in you.
Nostalgia for fiction is probably fairly unique to people who get fairly geeky about said fiction. Several different examples exist within my own life. If you're talking my teenage years, it's Star Trek, Xena, and Babylon 5. My college years would be Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter, and Stargate SG-1. Further back, you've got Dr. Seuss, The Indian In The Cupboard, and My Teacher Is An Alien. One of the things that's different about nostalgia for fiction is that the fiction still exists. For instance I HAVE The Lord Of The Rings on Blu-Ray and regular extended editions on my shelf right now. If I so choose, Frodo will get his uncle's ring again, have to destroy it again, and Pippin will have to stop Faramir from burning alive again. That might be fun, as I haven't done that in a while, but that's not why the dwarves singing Over The Misty Mountains Cold in the trailer for The Hobbit sends chills down my spine as I realize that world is back. As good and timeless as the fiction may be, it's either about what it got you through or who was with you when you were first exposed to it. Star Trek mattered so much as a teenager because it presented a world of intelligence and conversation where I would have something to bring to the table that had never mattered or been acknowledged in Harrison, AR. Lord Of The Rings mattered so much both because of the strange symmetry that developed between the initial shock of 9/11 and the alternately escapist and pragmatic themes of confronting evil in one's time and because it was my baptism into geek culture officiated over by my best friend and many other people, many of whom remain great friends of mine. When I saw Return Of The King, a rising cheer unanimously developed each time Gandalf struck Denethor and THAT is what I'm nostalgic about in that case. We were all united in our disdain for leaders gripped by cowardice and madness because it was all so very relevant to our lives. So when I get nostalgic for Harry Potter, as I certainly found myself doing at the park in Florida, it's not really about the stories, but about going through them with my friends. It seems to me if that if you're nostalgic about fiction because it helped you get through a time, you should probably watch or read it again to get through tough times to begin with. Hope springs eternal, as does messages of it. However, if you're nostalgic about fiction because you went through it with your friends, that probably just means you need to have friends over more often. Of course, it could also mean that you miss your friends, like I do in too many cases, and there's nothing for that.
Through nostalgia for the time and place that was Drury in my day, I will remember to be optimistic because that will make even the bad stuff not seem so bad. From the nostalgia for fiction I shall remember that one must always keep, remember, and respect one's consolations and that it is not really what you experience, but with whom it is experienced that counts. All nostalgia is rummaging through the past and all of us will do it, but we have to understand, or, indeed, have in the first place, a purpose for such strenuous sifting. However you go about your personal nostalgia and whatever or whomever it may be about which you are nostalgic, just remember that it's a powerful thing and an efficient tool for accessing positive emotion. What you must remember is that nostalgia is only useful in any important sense if it is useful to your efforts to build a better life in the present and in the future. Fiction for which I feel nostalgia tells me this. Samwise has his family, the greatest adventure of all. Harry grows up and sends his children on their own adventure. Maybe I won't have a family, but I'll go to the oldest of all nostalgia for me and say that I HAVE THE POWER!!!
-Frank
We'll start with nostalgia for youth, which is defined, in a general way and to varying degrees, as a time of less responsibility, less disillusionment, and less general worry. There are two important lessons to draw from here. The first is that happiness derived from naivete cannot and ought not be sought again and the second is that being less busy, less cynical, and worrying less do, in fact, make you happier. You don't really want to be a kid again though, because you had fewer rights back then. That didn't matter because you didn't have the responsibilities associated with those rights, but that doesn't mean the tradeoff's uneven. For my part, the rights you get are way better. If someone's annoying you socially as an adult, you get to leave and not be forced to be there by your parents or the government. Bullies are now subject to actual laws and you can get an actual concealed carry license (unless you live in Illinois). Also, you get whatever you want for dinner, whether that's steak, cookies, or spray cheese. Now that we've recognized the negative of youth, what of the positive? Well, disillusionment is about finding out things you loved weren't so awesome or that the world works in horrible ways. Some things, such as romantic love in my own case, are horrible and you just have to move on from them. However, the whole world doesn't suck because, as it turns out, the world is a pretty big place with a lot of stuff in it. If you can get a career you enjoy going, find a place to live you like, and, if you're not me, find love, you don't have get your illusions back because you can be happy with your life as it is. Sure, it's always going to be a compromise, but you can find enough magic in the world to make it worthwhile.
When it comes to nostalgia for a time (or place for our purposes), it's all about matching up the actual version of events with your recorded one. Take Drury from fall of 1999-spring of 2000. You know when Harry Potter is leaving Hogwarts in the first movie and he's euphorically happy with his new life and knowing he'll come back next year? That was me as I walked along campus to my car with my old friend Jon looking back on how awesome the year had been. Harry and I are both being ridiculous though, and for largely the same reason. In Harry's case, he had found out a powerful dark wizard had wanted him dead his whole life and, in fact, murder was attempted again that school year, his best friend had nearly died playing wizard's chess, and he'd been granted his own personal dedicated bully. For my part, I had alienated advisors in two majors, been bullied and intimidated by most members of my group of friends who were sporting a festering misogynistic streak, lost a scholarship to bad grades in political science, had developed a pathetic crush yet again, and ended the semester by destroying my roommate's painstaking drawing of his supervillain headquarters (we became best friends, actually). Why do Harry and I, absent reminders from our sense of logic and our contemporaries, have such a positive vision of our first year? It's because it was the greatest rush of hope for the future we'd ever had. Neither of us believed we'd ever have any friends, so the rush of excitement of having them was amazing enough to cast everything else we experienced in a much more kindly light. How do you apply this? Well, basically it's important to remember why you're nostalgic for a time or a place because it's not about that time or place, not really. Believe me, I've walked around Drury and I'm now just a stranger, so that rules of place. Talking to your peers from the time is all you can do to gauge what the time really was. All that matters and all that you need to worry about recapturing is the positive emotions that that time and place created in you.
Nostalgia for fiction is probably fairly unique to people who get fairly geeky about said fiction. Several different examples exist within my own life. If you're talking my teenage years, it's Star Trek, Xena, and Babylon 5. My college years would be Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter, and Stargate SG-1. Further back, you've got Dr. Seuss, The Indian In The Cupboard, and My Teacher Is An Alien. One of the things that's different about nostalgia for fiction is that the fiction still exists. For instance I HAVE The Lord Of The Rings on Blu-Ray and regular extended editions on my shelf right now. If I so choose, Frodo will get his uncle's ring again, have to destroy it again, and Pippin will have to stop Faramir from burning alive again. That might be fun, as I haven't done that in a while, but that's not why the dwarves singing Over The Misty Mountains Cold in the trailer for The Hobbit sends chills down my spine as I realize that world is back. As good and timeless as the fiction may be, it's either about what it got you through or who was with you when you were first exposed to it. Star Trek mattered so much as a teenager because it presented a world of intelligence and conversation where I would have something to bring to the table that had never mattered or been acknowledged in Harrison, AR. Lord Of The Rings mattered so much both because of the strange symmetry that developed between the initial shock of 9/11 and the alternately escapist and pragmatic themes of confronting evil in one's time and because it was my baptism into geek culture officiated over by my best friend and many other people, many of whom remain great friends of mine. When I saw Return Of The King, a rising cheer unanimously developed each time Gandalf struck Denethor and THAT is what I'm nostalgic about in that case. We were all united in our disdain for leaders gripped by cowardice and madness because it was all so very relevant to our lives. So when I get nostalgic for Harry Potter, as I certainly found myself doing at the park in Florida, it's not really about the stories, but about going through them with my friends. It seems to me if that if you're nostalgic about fiction because it helped you get through a time, you should probably watch or read it again to get through tough times to begin with. Hope springs eternal, as does messages of it. However, if you're nostalgic about fiction because you went through it with your friends, that probably just means you need to have friends over more often. Of course, it could also mean that you miss your friends, like I do in too many cases, and there's nothing for that.
Through nostalgia for the time and place that was Drury in my day, I will remember to be optimistic because that will make even the bad stuff not seem so bad. From the nostalgia for fiction I shall remember that one must always keep, remember, and respect one's consolations and that it is not really what you experience, but with whom it is experienced that counts. All nostalgia is rummaging through the past and all of us will do it, but we have to understand, or, indeed, have in the first place, a purpose for such strenuous sifting. However you go about your personal nostalgia and whatever or whomever it may be about which you are nostalgic, just remember that it's a powerful thing and an efficient tool for accessing positive emotion. What you must remember is that nostalgia is only useful in any important sense if it is useful to your efforts to build a better life in the present and in the future. Fiction for which I feel nostalgia tells me this. Samwise has his family, the greatest adventure of all. Harry grows up and sends his children on their own adventure. Maybe I won't have a family, but I'll go to the oldest of all nostalgia for me and say that I HAVE THE POWER!!!
-Frank
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