another perspective: on nostalgia

Maybe it's because my eyes ache and my bones are tired and my days, lately, are almost constantly roller coasters of mild, shut-down emotions that I keep under lock and key--for the kids--but this got me. This is by a friend--isn't it funny how many old souls I keep in the friendship room of my heart? Young faces, fresh-yet-weathered viewpoints--old souls.

Add "Sorrow" from High Violet and you have one stirred, not shaken, girl. This hit me in the gut. Hard. Softly, but hard.

"Cleaning out your email inbox can be a dangerous thing.

Life is designed on the principle that our pasts serve us to help build our futures. The other forces of the universe such as floods, volcanoes, or the steady erosion of wind don’t care where they come from or what consequences may come from their actions. They just thunder along, burning, cracking, and changing. Life isn’t like that. DNA itself is a reminder that we come from a great line of somethings that all led up to us. We have processing centers in our brain that learn from all of our stimuli and teach us useful things like “Don’t touch that metal on the stove,” or “Don’t let her walk away without telling her you love her.” That’s simply the way life is designed, and it makes it nearly impossible to “live in the present”. Being fourth-dimensionally aware has its major drawbacks, but that’s life. Literally.

So of course, nostalgia is a powerful thing. It can completely break you if you let it. It can drag you into the samskaras that you created 5 years ago, and can cause you to revisit old habits that you’ve long-since broken, or can bring back heartaches that you thought you’d forgiven. It’s basically a total bitch. But we cling to the things that we’ve left unresolved, or the beautiful moments that we never wanted to end. We preserved these little packets of memory and everything about them for later.

I used to be a total slave to nostalgia, which is absolutely crippling. By giving these emotional memories my time and consciousness I was only giving them the strength to further themselves, resulting in a toxic cycle. More importantly, I was taking precious time and energy away from the now and the every passing second of my current present life. Every time I did this I was loving an image that no longer existed, and closing my heart to the things that could still take agency in my life.

So what changed? I discovered the power to break free. It isn’t a matter of sterilizing your memory. You just have to realize that you are the you of THIS moment. Somebody else decided what memories to preserve and imbue with powers of their own. They do not dictate what matters to you, so much as they are doorways to an old you. If you have the power to breathe and to tell yourself that you belong to this moment, then you have the power to overcome the nostalgia monster.

Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with missing the way things were or the way you were. Pain can be beautifully exquisite. It can keep you holding on. It is something we all know, and it’s the stuff of myth and legend. It’s beautiful that we have the means of holding on to these moments that seem to define our lives.

But the stuff that you don’t need that’s weighing you down? Acknowledge it. Then dismiss it. You’ll be glad you did."

-Natalie Copeland