The Dangers of Nostalgia
“With a photographic memory
I could live in a time that used to be.”– Greg Ham
October seemed like a perfect time to go back and visit the alma mater. It just so happens that the weekend I picked was also homecoming weekend. It just so happens that the weekend I picked happened to be the 25th reunion for my graduating class.
That in of itself is a long story since I graduated in December. So, I was class of 1996, but I really wasn’t. It should have been 1997, but these things are complicated. I caught myself doing the same thing everyone else does when they see people honored at halftime of the football game. My first thought was, “who are all of those old people down there.” That thought process quickly switched to, “gee, do I know any of them?”
As I was pointing out landmarks to my wife and daughter it hit me like a ton of bricks. There was more different than there was the same. It’s then that you can’t really control the flood of emotions. It’s an unholy mixture of nostalgia, jealousy, and lack of connection. I could say the same of the new high school that sits on the same plot of land as my old one. I know people of my age and older can relate to these feelings.
I never knew why older people behaved the way that they did. The usual sentiment when someone wanted to renovate a school or make additions was to utter that “it was good enough for me so it should be good enough for you.” So, why do we need that new gym or that new addition with new science classrooms? Why do we need to spruce up the library? Why do we need to invest in new infrastructure so the kids can use their technology in the building? We didn’t need any of that crap.
If you don’t check yourself it is fairly easy to find yourself going down a different rabbit hole. It’s easy to find yourself talking about how unfair it is that these kids have it so nice. Why do they get the nicer dorms? Why did they get the new student center? It’s not fair that they got all of this new stuff. Think of what we would have done with all of this new stuff.
Give into those feelings and you become “get off my lawn” guy. It’s a slow but slippery descent that can creep up on you seemingly overnight. One minute you feel like a progressive kind of guy (or gal) that seems to know what’s hip and what’s going on. The next you’re just lost in a haze and wondering what the kids are doing and how they got to be so young.
Get off my lawn guy is bitter and hates change. Get off my lawn guy doesn’t want to spend any tax dollars improving things because they were good enough for him (or her) and they should be good enough for you. Get off my lawn guy is the one that starts every story off with a “back in my day…” Get off my lawn guy is the guy (or gal) that we all swore we would never become when we were young.
Some of us have become get off my lawn guy. Some of us haven’t. The deciding factor is how we deal with change. I never quite understood how people became stick in the mud conservatives when I was young. Now that I’m not so young I understand. It’s equal parts jealousy and equal parts nostalgia. The trouble is that it simultaneously was never as good as we remember it and it was also better than our parents had it. That’s the conundrum that get off my lawn guy can never reconcile.
“Nostalgia is a word we use
to color what one borrows
from half-remembered yesterdays
and unfulfilled tomorrows”
–J. Allan Lind
1I can barely remember my 25th. My 40th reunion was virtual this June. So, “Get off my lawn you young whippersnapper.” /s
While I’m happy to play the curmudgeon for purposes of snark, I hope to avoid actually becoming one. My 27 year-old son says I’m pretty woke, which I take as a great compliment. My plan for retirement includes voter registration drives and cooking in soup kitchens. I don’t plan to spend all of my time reliving the past.
“You are not required to finish your work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it.” -Pirke Aboth (Sayings of the Fathers)
2The very first tax I ever voted for was to put air conditioning in the schools in the parish where I lived. BTW, that’s a county to everyone living outside the state of Louisiana. The days I spent in second floor classrooms with the early afternoon sun beating down on me are not an experience I would visit on the youth of today.
Though the windows were open, the teacher did not like to lower the blinds as that was supposed to inhibit air flow. Unlike central Texas, the wind doesn’t blow almost all the time in Louisiana. You might say turn the fans on. Yeah, sure, they were expensive and so was electricity. So we suffered.
To this day, if there is a tax or referendum to improve schools I am proud to support it. BTW, I attended my 50th high school reunion a month ago. The school has been added onto and the second floor classroom I wrote about is also gone, replaced by a three story building. I can only imagine how hot that third floor would be without A/C.
3Funny, it never occurred to me to be jealous or resentful of the changes to my college or high school campuses. I think it’s all really cool, and I’m happy to be associated with a modern place. I guess I’m a lousy curmudgeon.
I’m with Bill F. (my 35th reunion is next year), with the same hopes for my retirement. Some people around me tell me they don’t know what they’ll do when they retire, but I have a long list.
4I graduated from my California high school in 1965, back in the Dark Ages before Title IX gave girls access to (somewhat) equal treatment in sports. I remember going with a friend of mine to our school principal to plead our case for a girls’ swimming team. Our school didn’t have a pool and the boys practiced at a local park. Needless to say, he told us that was out of the question.
Then in the late ’70s the school acquired a pool and with it a swim team for the girls because of Title IX. I watched a video last year online of the girls’ champion water polo team. My school is largely Hispanic now when it wasn’t before, but I couldn’t be happier that those girls have the opportunities that were denied to me.
5I obviously knew my audience here wouldn’t be get off my lawn guy (or gal) since we seem to be focused in a certain way. I also don’t begrudge kids anything that they have to work with because that’s part of the cycle of life. We had stuff our parents never had and so forth.
What I think is more important is the knowledge of how easy it is to get trapped into this mode of thinking. It’s down the street neighbor are the folks that ask how come person A gets this when I can’t afford that. For instance, instead of simply asking why insulin is so expensive they have to insert something about Obama phones or something else not related. They are all parts of the same thing. Obviously, those on the other side seem to gravitate towards this type of thinking.
6Nick, you are welcome on my lawn. Bring your rake.
7You know, Nick, your posts wouldn’t be so long if you didn’t repeat phrases over and over again, like an itinerant preacher.
Do you have some minimum you feel is necessary?
My 65th is coming in ’23, and I won’t attend. No relevance.
8TexasTrailerParkTrash, you brought back so many memories. I was on the girls’ all star soccer team in my jr. high (didn’t have middle school in 1963) and we could only play the other jr. high team in town- unlike the boys’ team that traveled the state. No money for girls teams. So I may be a bit envious- especially when I see all those young women scientists and engineers featured in the professional society journals. But mostly I’m glad for my independent, confident granddaughters whose moms never told them “Be a lady!” and “Not MY daughter!” (That was when I showed her a photo of a geologist hanging from the side of a cliff.)
9Maybe more frustrated wannabe speechwriter Ormond. I’ll work on it.
10I hated high school. Wouldn’t go back for anything. Graduated in 1963. It was a Catholic HS in the state of Utah. The girls had to wear uniforms. Blue plaid pleated skirts, blue sweater, white blouse. Boys wore khakis, and any color shirt they wanted.
11There was a boys baseball team, basketball team, and track team. Girls had nothing. When we asked for a track team we were told girls didn’t need to exert themselves because we could get hurt and there wasn’t any money. But there was money for boys to attend some sports meets in Colorado.
The only reason girls had gym class (half a semester) was because the state of Utah mandated it.
I have 3 beautiful granddaughters and will do anything they ask so that they have the chances to become a whole human being and be happily fulfilled.