What is it about the past? This is a question that has been floating through my mind a lot lately, for I find myself bombarded with beautiful, but unwanted thoughts of people and experiences long gone from my life. And I've been giving into those memories, and in some cases actively nurturing them, even though I know that they have the potential to make a mess of now.
Why?
Robert Fulford gave the 1999 Massey Lectures (a really fantastic series!) about the human need to tell stories as a means of understanding our lives, and I think that has something to do with it. From the beginning of humanity - yes, even before "civilization" - people have used storytelling as a way by which to explain the world and our place in it. Why should modern man be any different? The fact that today we have people like filmmakers and authors who are paid to tell us stories does not discount the individual desire to make sense of our lives.
But what about when making sense of the past turns into nostalgia? Is there any way to guard against it? Nostalgia is a pretty dangerous thing, or at least it has been in my life. Don't get me wrong - I'm relatively content in my current situation - but there have been times that, in retrospect, look like complete perfection. I find it alarmingly easy to slip into yearning for those times, and that yearning tends to stall (at the very least) any new endeavours in my life.
As Jim Brickman wrote in the immortal Meatloaf classic, "objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are," and the times my mind most likes to return to were so long ago that it seems almost indecent to still revel in the feelings they elicit in me. I've begun to think that those feelings aren't particularly genuine, and that perhaps nostalgia is merely a trick played by mind that is frightened to step into the new. There's only one way to find out. Take that step....
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