Looking Past to the Present

Posted on | June 4, 2009 | No Comments

Sometimes in life, there are things you just can’t escape, like that old joke that says the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. Lately, I feel like the universe is screaming “nostalgia!” at me.

A few weeks ago, I went to the graduation ceremony for my graduate program, five months after finishing. This upcoming weekend, it’s my 5 year undergraduate college reunion and my Facebook feed is abuzz with news about the weekend. I read Seth Godin’s blog and he tells me that nostalgia is a basic human emotion, while at the same time, I come across a quote from Carl Sagan that tells me, “You have to know the past the understand the present.”

Hey universe? I got it.

Yet for all of these signs (and I am the kind of person who believes in signs), I feel lukewarm – at best – about nostalgia. I’m not opposed to revisiting memories or past events (good or bad). I didn’t have some dark and tragic childhood that I’m trying to suppress. But indulging in a “wistful desire” or “sentimental yearning” for an “idealized” past? Eh, no thanks.

Which is not to say I haven’t indulged before. Oh, I watched all the I Love the 80′s and I Love the 90′s on VH-1. And I definitely have had fond thoughts of the days when I didn’t have to pay bills. But overall, I’m just not that excited about the past. When I was growing up, I spent so much time just wishing I could get to the next big thing. In middle school, I couldn’t wait for high school. In high school, I was dying to get to college. In college, it was all about finishing so I could finally start my “real life.”

Now when I look back on all of that, I think I wasted a lot of time. It’s like I sped through life, only to suddenly realize that I was missing all of the things I was supposed to be enjoying. So I guess now I feel like I don’t want to waste any more time, either by wishing for the future or being nostalgic for the past.

For the first time in a very long time, I’m happy with exactly right now. Sure, it’s not perfect. But when I look at the big picture, I’m happy. I’m incredibly lucky to have a job, I’ve got great family and friends. I have so many things so many people don’t have. Why waste any minute of my life wishing I could go back and revisit or even change things? Yeah, I might have missed a lot in my haste to get “there,” but all of it eventually brought me here. And I like here just fine.

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