It’s the antithetical concoction of that dry-swallowed pill sensation paired with a feeling that can best be described as a comforting hug from an old friend. Artlessly, I’ve fallen into fledgling streaks of meditation dealing with self-concept: past, present, future. Extended, 1-2 month periods of time accompanied with seemingly unusual quietness paired with a dash of aloofness- empty yet perforated gazes.
I’m not a very popular party guest during these times, I know this.
In that classic pseudo-existential crisis fashion, thoughts seemed to skip and replay like a busted VCR tape- Playing on the screen on repeat: potential, love, heartbreak, power, sex, knowledge, loss, inadequacy, cowardness, Deja Deja v… It all felt all too familiar. My experiences and memories in the past 3 years have been wild and wildly misarranged.
To look back at them felt as though I’ve trumped the immense momentum and direction of my life. I found myself utterly obsessed with nostalgia. Unfounded feelings that typically accompanied themselves with self-doubt, lost potential, lament, revealed to me that each time I did indulge in nostalgia, it was deja vu each time. I’ve felt this before, although the experience is different each time. I frequently found myself losing myself. Playing the face of someone who once existed to chase a feeling of familiarity, completely disregarding my present moment. And, ironically, I ended up seeing myself become someone who I never was and never would I’d want to be. Of course, a large part of this was the people I chose to surround myself with, but life is one continuous vector of time that drops off and picks up. We drop off those bad for our health- usually through trial and error- and gain new experiences on the way, ultimately building a new foundation for our lives.
Life breeds a sort of fear of the unknown, and we often treat this fear with familiarity and old habits- covering new wounds with old bandages. Yet when we don’t learn from them, we fall susceptible to cycles of repetition- making room for self-sabotage and breaking generational curses that much harder.
I’ve begun to intrusively critique the common and horrible adage implying that one shouldn’t look into the past. This simply is and has always been conta-human in its essence. It continues to be completely and utterly misplaced in regard to what our past really means to us. Yet, I continued to throw away my past behind me, which left me feeling like I’ve lost a dear friend.
We are so ready to throw nostalgia away, but it’s sneaky and sly nature may imply it’s there for a reason. Unhealthy relationships with nostalgia exist, there is no doubt. The litmus test for unhealthy nostalgia leaves you with a feeling of great loss, followed by a search and chase. In essence, we grieve for an experience/feeling/event belonging to a past extension of ourselves.
We disregard change, current and equally pressing events in our lives in the search of familiarity, comfort, or at times, complacency in past experiences; aspiring to them almost as if it's a life that has never been our own. It’s our plummeting tendencies to chase circumstances which we have completely disassociated with our most current personal identity and circumstances.
But very rarely are these situations which we look at with nostalgia small in the grand scheme of our lives. It’s your first love, a shared dinner table with past loved ones, your past naivety, splendor, charisma, free-spiritedness. It’s your ex’s scarf lying lifelessly on the coat rack for a year now, it’s the empty notebook waiting to be written in carefully but thoughtlessly. It's the diamond that lost its shine.
We envy time itself, yet it can continue to define our lives and it’s finitude. We revert back to nostalgia because it’s easy. It’s easy to replay a movie to see our favorite parts, but the director’s cut requires more work and builds a healthier appreciation of the scene in its aggregate.
Our reversion to the past, in my eyes, means there's unfinished business. The mental work that laboriously envelopes a completed free-hanging thought. And no, I’m not talking about closure with an ex (very overrated, in my opinion).
It’s sexier than that.
I preach self-reflection like it’s the 3rd Testament of the Bible, but not under any weak foundational premise. Self-reflection is a lost art in a world overrun by on-demand distraction. It’s a mental massage. Sure, it hurts like hell, but the relief is damn near orgasmic at the end. It allows us to revert not to nostalgia as a way to fill free time to think but instead grabs it by the horns and reverts you back to the healthy balance of strength and lets you come out with a newer version of yourself.
One that doesn’t disassociate personal past experiences as if they were strangers, but uses them to help aid in building up that powerful present self ready to tackle the future. Distractions are funny in a way that a mime is: it's quiet, yet direct. We work, fuck, party, play, learn, but do we know the line between distraction and decisiveness? Our decisions are shaped by our past experiences, it's simply human nature. Good ol' trial and error forces us to faux behaviors that misdirect our true essence in fear of past mistakes, fear of looking into this exact moment with regret, nostalgia, etc. But our intentions are clear, we just have to look past. the noise, and address them accordingly. Not easy, but sexy fo sho.
Give yourself time to think, being unapologetically yourself, and heal accordingly. Life is fast and unforgiving like a nocturnal predator. We maneuver and navigate the world experiencing and showing empty interactions as a result of a lack of presence. Be a present, and be present with history, not a distant past.
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