Nostalgia

He wants to go home. He wants to find a world he once knew. I know not if it is the promise of personal richness or if it is simplicity that now drives him. He needs to find his spirit and clear out whatever monsters inhabit that place, to reclaim what is rightfully his.

On the surface that desire seems a reasonable, even a noble endeavour. The desire to avenge a wrong and restore his name and position cannot be underestimated.

The road will not likely be an easy one. Many viperous, unmerciful and vulgar demons lay between himself and his spirit, and certainly that road promises to become even more lurid if he does not find the entrance to those evils, and release them. My one fear concerning this journey that he undertakes is a fear for himself. He want to return home and there are many good reasons why he should, there also remains one prime reason why he should not. If that reason is Nostalgia, if that is the reason for his desire, then I dread that he will be bitterly disappointed.

Nostalgia is the greatest of the lies that we tell ourselves. It is the glossing of the past to fit the sensibilities of the present. For some it brings a measure of comfort, a sense of self and source, but for others, I fear they take these altered memories too far, and because of that, they paralyze themselves to the realities around them.

How many people long for that, 'past, simpler and better world', I wonder without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they, themselves who were simpler and better, not the world around them? Those few years of life are not so different in terms of emotional development, from those already 'adult'. I remember that idealism and energy of my younger days when the world seemed an uncomplicated place, when right and wrong were plainly written on the path of my every stride. Perhaps, in a strange way, because of the fact that my early years were so full of joyful and terrible experiences, were so full of an environment and experiences that I simply, could not tolerate. I am better off now, has that contributed to my optimism, for my own existence and for all the world around me?

So many people that have passed the middle of their expected lives, continue to look back for their paradise, continue to claim that the world was a far better place when they were young.

I cannot believe that.

There may be specific instances where that is true. A tyrant king is replaced by a compassionate ruler, an era of health engulfs the land after a plague. I believe, I Must believe that the people of this world are an improving lot, that the natural evolution of civilizations, though not necessarily a straight line progression, moves towards the betterment of the world. For every time a better way is found, people naturally gravitate towards its direction, whilst failed experiments will be left and abandoned. All of them, man and woman, will be the better for the change, that change must be for the better? So civilizations evolve to a better understanding and a better place.

For generations of aristocracy and rich land owners, change can be seen as a defiant threat to their power base and so their resistance to it seems logical, even expected. How then, can we find explanation in the fact that so many people, even those who live in squalor, as did their parents and their parent's parents, going back generation after generation, view any change with an equal fear and revulsion? Why would not the lowliest creature desire evolution of civilisation if that progression might lead to a better life for their children?

That would seem coherent, but I have seen that this is not the case. For many, if not most of the people who have passed their healthiest and strongest years, who have put their better days behind them, accepting any change seems no easy thing. So many of these people clutch at the past when the world was , "simpler and better". They rue change on a personal level, as if any improvements coming behind them will shine a bright and revealing light on their own failings.

Perhaps, that is it. Perhaps it is one of our most basic fears and one wrought of foolish pride, that our children will know better than we do. At the same time those people tilt the virtues of their children, as if there is some deep fright that those children will exploit the errors of their parents.

Nostalgia is a necessary thing I believe, and a way for all of us to find peace in that which we have accomplished or failed to accomplish. At the same time if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rose-tinted time, particularly in one who believes their life to be a failure, then it is an empty thing. Doomed to produce nothing but frustration and an even greater sense of failure.

Even worse, if nostalgia throws barriers in the path towards evolution, then it is a limited thing indeed.

I have no definite answers to this seeming paradox but for your sake, I pray that you seek your spirit for the right reasons, for the challenge and the sake of your personal restoration , and not for any desire you have to make the world as it once was.

Written 15/03/2008

#OldWritings #Nostalgia