Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
The bizarre thing about nostalgia is it seems like a lovely stroll down memory lane, and often is has a more somber result, leading us down a dark labyrinth of the past. We hear advice to ‘live in the present’ and to honor ‘the power of now,’ hoping to avoid pitfalls of living in the past and anxiously focusing on the future. Ideally, we find the middle way.
If we can acknowledge the past without getting mired in it, we are liberated to enjoy what we are doing in this moment. While it can be thrilling to plan for the next event, there is a benefit in remaining grounded in where we are right now. The key is to note where your thoughts go and how often they take you there.
Without photos and social media, the past would be a figment of our imagination, blurry details of situations we recall with less accuracy the more time passes. With constant reminders and artificial connectors to memories through platforms like social media, we may vacillate between reliving the past and making sense of the current. We also tend to do this with items we save, assigning meaning to objects we hold on to.
When something happens to those keepsakes, the hit is harder than when we focus on our memories and thoughts instead. Which brings us back to living in the present. Nostalgia can be a bittersweet space between the past and present. The past usually remembered as better than it was! It is a reminder that we cannot relive those days, that we are only moving forward. And maybe that is a great thing. In the same way there are events we are happy to never relive, there are so many exciting days to look forward to, and good moments in the here and now. Cheers!