on nostalgia and all of its complications
One day, during my fourth straight hour of back to back zoom calls, I stared off into the void with my video off, microphone muted, spaced out for longer than I probably should have. And I started to laugh.
I remembered the night before we had to move out of the freshman dorms in college. We ordered pizza from King Richies, an institution, played Beyonce and James Bay, laid down on the floor with our legs perched up on the wall. And we just let ourselves be as we were.
I remembered that time I was at a Hedley concert in sophomore year of high school on Canada Day with my squad and we were lying down on the grass watching the fireworks. I wished I could take that moment, put it in my pocket, and take it around with me for the rest of my life.
I remembered that time me and my friends spent a consecutive 15 hours in the library and pooled our money to get family-sized vegan pad thai. It was one of the best meals I’d ever eaten.
I remembered all this and all it did was make me sad. I was sad that all I am left with today are remnants from a past that feels like one that I’ll never get back. Our world feels like it’s forever changed. Like we’re all in a vortex and when we’re out of it, we won’t recognize where we are, who we’ve become, or the world that we find ourselves in. How do we reconcile who we used to be and who this disease forced us to become? How do we get ourselves out of this period of suspended animation that we’ve found ourselves in?
Nostalgia. Noun. a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Past memories provide a comfort that the world we’re currently living in does not. Like singing I Like It by Cardi B in the car with your best friend while eating mediocre pizza from the place across the street from your high school. Why wouldn’t you want that warm, fuzzy feeling to protect you from all the craziness that’s going on outside?
Here’s the complicated thing about living in the past though, is that you forget life is happening to you in this moment. Ignoring the fact that I’m (supposedly) an adult about to quote Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore said it perfectly - you dwell in dreams and start to forget to live. Just because people are at a standstill doesn’t mean that time is. The sun rises and sets every day, we’re all turning one year older, the earth keeps on spinning. For me, this realization was very retroactive because my recognition of the passage of time happened only once time has passed. How can we proactively recognize the passing of each moment as it’s happening and live fully in the present? We are capable of doing this only when we zoom out to look at behaviors, actions, or incidents over an extended period of time, which happens after the fact.
This presents a complicated challenge. I was reading “Know My Name” by Chanel Miller (a book that you’ve no doubt seen me rave about if you follow me on Twitter), a memoir by the Stanford rape case survivor. Chanel is a formidable writer and thinker and outlines a concept that moved me - that trauma lies in how we get stuck when we are taken back to a place where we felt pain, where we are consumed by it. Healing starts to happen when we are able to come and go from painful memories as we please. Similarly, one is able to live fully in the present when they develop the ability to come and go from places that invoke feelings of nostalgia.
Times of elation and adventure that I’ve experienced in the past are my place of comfort, memories that remind me that the world I live in today still bears some resemblance to the world I used to live in. We shouldn’t conflate the past with reality, however inviting it may feel during times of pain or distress. Writing this post is more of a reminder to myself (and hopefully to those of you reading this) to find excitement in the world we’re living in today, in whatever form it may come.