Nostalgia

I’ve been thinking about a post on nostalgia for a long time. Almost long enough for me to look back fondly on what I initially thought about it. See what I did there? As I grow older, I honestly don’t feel that nostalgic about stuff, or I suppose I enjoy a little bit of nostalgia, but I don’t let those happy memories consume me and take over what is happening now. I try to look at what I’m doing now, be happy and content in the moment and think about what is ahead.

Nostalgia is a great feeling. It’s part of our makeup as humans where we can look back affectionately on days gone by and be happy that we met someone, or that something happened, or you had a really good ice cream that one time and they don’t make ’em like that any more etc, etc. And this is all great, but I think it’s holding us back. There seems to be a train of thought that everything today is shit and broken and it was all better back in the day…

This sentimentality for the past has been allowed to spread like a weed and choke off any thinking about the here and now and how we can progress. There are growing movements to curtail women’s rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, rights for foreign people, because it doesn’t matter where you go in the world, if you’re foreign and you don’t have vast swathes of money, you’re no good to some. We are constantly going backwards on environmental protections. I remember during winter, we had politicians crowing about how back when they were kids, there was no central heating and there was frost on the inside of house windows and it never did them any harm. That’s nice. But it’s the 21st century, surely we can aspire to be better than that and ensure everyone is warm enough when it’s cold. No? In my opinion there is a growing movement that everything was better back then (whenever ‘then’ is) and we need to get back there as swiftly as possible and fuck those who have flourished in the mean time.

At times I despair because I think we’re going backwards because of nostalgia. Those in charge keep thinking that the great in Great Britain is a self fulfilling prophecy and if only we could get back to when it was created and stay there. Well we can’t. The only way we can go is forward. So if you’re ever stuck thinking, ‘I wish it was back in the day, because this would be different,’ I’m afraid you’re onto a loser. You’d be much better served thinking about what we can do now and how that will help in the future. And yes history is a great teacher. But it’s also the minimum. We have to build on that history to make something more, something better. I just think we’d be much better off thinking about today and tomorrow and not yesterday.