Nostalgia sure ain’t how it used to be.
What exactly is nostalgia?
Like many of you, I pine for the good old days. But were the good old days really that good? I remember reading a book years ago where the main character made the following pronouncement:
“Nostalgia is just the ability to forget about the parts that sucked”
At the time, I thought it was more funny than apt.
However, in some ways, I think it is true. No time is ever perfect. But when you look back fondly of a time gone by, the good old days, are you remembering everything? Are you remembering it as it was, or do you remember it as you experienced it?
It’s that time of year when students are ending their formal education for the year. As Alice Cooper sang, ‘School’s Out for Summer’.
For some, it’s an endless opportunity for wonder, fun, and learning in the real world. For others, it may be the last carefree time of their lives. Soon, they will all enter the working world.
I can speak from great experience on this. This time of year as an adult is not the same as this time of year as a child. When I was 12, I was facing two whole months of mostly freedom. Friends, playing, picnics, visits to the waterpark, and a family vacation somewhere. I didn’t have to worry about money, time, or obligations to anyone else. It was me and my friends. Maybe summer camp.
Today, I woke up and had to go to work. And while having just come off a long weekend, it was only 3 days off. I am back working all this week. And the week after. And the week after that.
So to say that I pine for the old days would be an understatement.
Was it really that good?
But were those days really that good? Or was am I just forgetting the parts that sucked?
If I think about that time off, I didn’t REALLY have all the freedom I made it seem above. I only thought I did. Back then, I was geographically limited to the area around my home. Anything beyond that, I relied on one set of parents or another to go anywhere. And don’t get me wrong, my parents were great about that. But it wasn’t a sure thing.
Also, anything I wanted to do that involved needing to go somewhere else, also involved money. Too young for a summer job, meant chores, which cut into my apparent freedom that I remember when I think back on that time. Of course, again, there was the generosity of my parents.
Or maybe I wanted to do something and my friends didn’t or couldn’t. Or maybe they had gone away on a family vacation and weren’t available.
Then I got to thinking: What if I was able to be off all summer and have the freedom to do whatever I wanted? I could go anywhere I wanted any time I wanted to. I could do, and pay for, anything I wanted to whenever I wanted to do it.
Teachers have this luxury.
I do not. But if I did, would I pine for the old times like I do now? I sat and pondered that question over the weekend, with a drink in hand (another thing not allowed back then). I concluded that if I had that freedom now, I would still be nostalgic for the past.
The Past
Back then, I was young. The whole world was in front of me. I didn’t have a care in the world, and I still had the fresh-faced innocence of a child. But, I was also naive enough to believe that I could become whatever I wanted to become.
I used to play a lot of sports when I was young. Any one of those sports had a dream attached to every game I played. Maybe I’d be the next tennis star. Could I be an all-star shortstop? How about the keeper for Canada in the World Cup? Or my personal favourite, Most Outstanding Canadian as a receiver in the Canadian Football League for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the team I grew up cheering for because of my dad.
Never mind that I wasn’t the tallest, fastest, most sure-handed player. Ignore the fact that I had so many things to occupy my time that I didn’t have the desire to commit to one sport to make any of that happen. And don’t forget the minuscule odds that any individual kid will actually make it to the pinnacle of their chosen sport.
I believed it was possible.
I also never had to worry about much back then. Not following the news much, aside from sports scores, I wasn’t exposed to anything bad. I never knew what went into keeping a house operating smoothly: The finances, the repairs, the upkeep, the scheduling, and keeping everyone fed and occupied. And most important, I wasn’t responsible for the well-being of anyone else.
Back then, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And that makes that time hit differently.
The Present
Nowadays, I DO know that the odds of any given kid on the playground becoming a star athlete are so small as to make it almost impossible. And I’m also way too old to pursue that dream.
I’ve lost a lot of loved ones in my life. I know now that we won’t be here forever and I feel it has changed my view on things.
It also costs a lot of money to do things as well. I know all too well the burdens of finances that were so neatly hidden from me as a Chile. To this day, I don’t know how my parents were able to do all the things we did. Or to schedule it and keep everyone where they needed to be at the right time.
I don’t want to say the real world has beat me down. But it has opened my eyes to a lot more realities than I was ever exposed to back then.
So yes, I would look back more fondly on my time as a child if I had the same freedom now.
And I don’t think it’s so much that we forget the parts that sucked, but that there was so much you didn’t know, didn’t get exposed to, that makes us view the world differently. And once you do know, and are exposed to those things, it’s hard to look at everything the same way again.
I remember a vacation that we took as a family. At a cottage on a lake. Beach life for a whole week. Fishing. Campfires. Eating s’mores. I know NOW that it was probably a struggle to get us there and make it seem fun and effortless.
It makes me think of an exchange NosNofrom “A Christmas Story Christmas’ (the sequel to the classic):
“My dad made this all look so easy”
A Christmas Story Christmas
“That doesn’t mean it WAS easy”
It’s true. It looked easy. Now I know it wasn’t easy. Nothing was ever easy, I just didn’t know it back then. Things aren’t better or worse than then. Just different.
And somehow, when I look back, I remember the feelings I had back then, as it if was then.
Before I knew the truth.
