Is there anything more seductive, and more disappointing, than nostalgia?
It creeps up on you, giving you rose coloured memories, snippets of feelings stirred from deep within, a sense of longing for times long past, times that seem from one's perspective of great distance, to be somehow sunnier, more real, more alive, and more potent than the actual moment one is recalling.
Nostalgia is a bitch. When you are in its grip, it ruins any hope of deep connection with the NOW, that elusive moment where one truly lives. It taps you on the shoulder saying "but if only you were here when you were THERE.... with the people you WERE with.... in the moment you USED to have, fleeting moment, which you probably didn't truly appreciate even while you were in it...."
Nostalgia can go wash its head in a bucket.
I am planning a trip to Jenolen Caves with my boyfriend.
If you were me, you would understand how fraught that single phrase is.
You would surely appreciate the mix of memories that rise up, unbidden, from childhood, from early adulthood, from mid 20s, from early 30s..... each phase of these memories slapping me in the face, with a fish, Monty Python-style, in the attempt to make me feel like this trip will be somehow lesser, somehow a shadow of the trips of times gone by.
NO NOSTALGIA!
THOU SHALT NOT OWN ME!
BEGONE!
I want to truly enjoy each wonderful, precious NEW moment that I create with my wonderful man.
And so I shall.
:D
It creeps up on you, giving you rose coloured memories, snippets of feelings stirred from deep within, a sense of longing for times long past, times that seem from one's perspective of great distance, to be somehow sunnier, more real, more alive, and more potent than the actual moment one is recalling.
Nostalgia is a bitch. When you are in its grip, it ruins any hope of deep connection with the NOW, that elusive moment where one truly lives. It taps you on the shoulder saying "but if only you were here when you were THERE.... with the people you WERE with.... in the moment you USED to have, fleeting moment, which you probably didn't truly appreciate even while you were in it...."
Nostalgia can go wash its head in a bucket.
I am planning a trip to Jenolen Caves with my boyfriend.
If you were me, you would understand how fraught that single phrase is.
You would surely appreciate the mix of memories that rise up, unbidden, from childhood, from early adulthood, from mid 20s, from early 30s..... each phase of these memories slapping me in the face, with a fish, Monty Python-style, in the attempt to make me feel like this trip will be somehow lesser, somehow a shadow of the trips of times gone by.
NO NOSTALGIA!
THOU SHALT NOT OWN ME!
BEGONE!
I want to truly enjoy each wonderful, precious NEW moment that I create with my wonderful man.
And so I shall.
:D
