The Nostalgia Trap

 I spend a lot of time on mindfulness meditation and exercises. It helps me to lower stress and stay focused on the present. It is funny then that I walked face first into a landmine of nostalgia and rumination. 

We all carry things around with us from the past. I put some work into metaphorically cauterizing all the open wounds on my psyche from unresolved emotional remnants about five years ago. Let me elaborate a bit on that. Tomorrow (3 April) my first wife and I would have been married twenty-four years. We were separated before we were married a year. We got through an ugly divorce before what would have been our fifth wedding anniversary. 

Why do I think about our anniversary every year at this time? My brain remembers most everything even if it jumbles the order. I remember great details about things all the way back to being about four years old. I still remember my parents and grandparents home phone numbers from my childhood. What that means for me is that my brain can slip into the past and produce either great nostalgia or potentially great regret. 

From time to time I have to snap myself out of some of the finer problematic knots of my past. I like to think everyone is like that. Our minds wander back to an embarrassing encounter in our middle school or high school days and the resulting nostalgia ties us in emotional knots. The longer we live the easier it is to cast our minds backward and fall into this trap of nostalgia. 

Take for instance my board game collection. It mostly gathers dust on my shelves with rare opportunities to break out something like Cosmic Encounter or Betrayal at House on the Hill. I can find myself longing for the past when I worked in a board game store and had a large group of friends that frequented the shop. It was so easy to get any type of game group off the ground and sustain it. I do miss those times. 

Would I be well served to go back and try to recapture that time in my life? I certainly could quit my current job where I have advanced several times. I could leave behind the great culture and all of my accomplishments. I could give up my (not great) benefits. Doing so would be trading the problem of not being surrounded by people with common interest in gaming for other problems like a lack of financial stability, a lack of (not great) benefits, and all of the other positive aspects of what I do for work now. 

Nostalgia is dangerous. It can make me want to back up in my life. I liken the idea to walking backwards up a hiking trail. You may be fine. You may also trip on a root or rock and tumble down the side of a mountain. That nostalgic view is also very likely to make us dissatisfied with our present. Things seem as if they aren't as good now as they were once upon a time. This is a lie. Our brains filter our past heavily. They paint over the horrors and ugly parts that we would have a hard time dealing with if they just popped up out of nowhere in our minds. 

The thing is we crossed the ground that we crossed for a reason. I needed that time in my life with my friends who showed up and gamed with me. I would love to have more gaming in my life, but I don't want to do that at the cost of taking a step backward in an attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle. I COULD hang out in a game store or even work in one. I wouldn't have the same group. The location would be different. More importantly, I am a very different person than I was then. It will not be the same. 

The truth is I shouldn't want to try and return to who I was before. I am proud of the person I have become. I still have plenty of growth and development ahead of me, but I have come a very long way. I couldn't hang out in the parking lot of the game store until 3 or 4 in the morning several days of each week. I have plenty of things in my life that are just not compatible with doing that. They are important to me. To quote the movie Role Models," No, I like to rock n' roll all night and part of every day. I usually have errands. I can rock from like one to three." 

Nostalgia for people is even more dangerous. I keep hearing the quote," They are an ex for a reason." This is absolutely true. I have come to believe that all people are not meant to be permanent fixtures in our lives. I think we have people who are meant to be there in a chapter or season of your life. If you tried to plug them into your life later it would go poorly. 

Even when a person leaves your life on good terms that does not mean that they can return to it and return to the relationship you had with them before. This is a mistake I make often. I want friends and family to be the same to me now as they once were. That never works. Expecting it to will only lead to disappointment and disillusionment. 

We all change. Just the act of living forces some shifts in interest and personality over the natural function of our lives. This is as it should be. I think I looked at the Biblical parable of the prodigal son in the wrong light.  I always thought how the son came back to his father's home and lived happily ever after. If that story had a follow up all that likely happened was that the father and son rekindled their relationship and learned how to part on more agreeable terms. The father had learned how to live with the pain of the absence of the son. The son meanwhile had learned how to live independently. Things were very unlikely to be the same. If one or the other of them tried to force their prior relationship, things ended poorly. 

It is entirely possible that a real version of that father simply needed closure on why his son ran away in the first place. After a brief "honeymoon" phase the novelty of reconnection would likely wear off and the things that drove the son away would still be present. Best case scenario is them parting again amicably and learning how to evolve their relationship. Worst case scenario, the son leaves and never darkens his father's door again. 

I have lived more than half (of what I assume will be) my life as a heavily nostalgic person. This has been a waste of energy. It has lulled me into a dissatisfaction with the present circumstances at times. I have spent time telling myself lies about how much better things used to be. They weren't. In fact, if I take my focus off of whatever imagined positive situations I can typically rediscover all the signs of me being unhappy, angry, depressed, or dissatisfied back then. With the exception of a few cultural things like music, movies, art, or experiences it is best to leave the past where it belongs: behind you. If you find yourself face to face with someone or somewhere that you have already moved past in life, move with caution. The nostalgia of what once was will trick you. 

That nostalgia trap can make for an ugly present. If you did have a positive thought about what once was and the present version doesn't live up to the shiny memory then you will end up with emotional dissonance. Few realities, with the notable exception of video games, live up to the stories our brains tell us about how great things once were. 

Trust me on this. Don't go into anything expecting it to be as good as you remember it to be. You will end up frustrated and disappointed. 

On the flip side, while it is very difficult, you can approach a past relationship or situation as if it is something shiny and new. You can get to know a place or a person again and appreciate them for how they are now without the emotional baggage attached to who you both were before. That is the only way I know to safely navigate the white water rapids that are nostalgia.