I had a weird thing happen to me this morning. I was taking my youngest to the doctor and there was a traffic back-up on the main highway. I decided to take some side streets through the town where I grew up and I ended up driving by my old elementary school (which is now a mall...as old elementary schools tend to be). I drove around the back of it on some roads where I hadn't traveled in years. As I drove, I had this flood of nostalgic emotion. I actually almost cried. I was telling my wife about it while we drove and she said she gets the same way when she goes to her old elementary school. We then had a discussion about why that happens. We basically landed on the fact that it makes us think of simpler times when we had no responsibility or care about anything. All of this got me thinking about nostalgia and how dangerous it can be.
Nostalgia is really just an illusion. I'll hear older people talk about "the good old days" (which is usually the 40s or 50s) and you get the impression that everything was sunshine and farts for everyone involved in those time periods. But let's dissect this and look at it a little bit. Would the 40s have been all that good if you were Japanese and were wrongly imprisoned in internment camps during the war? Would the 40s and 50s have been good if you were black? What if you a woman and couldn't vote, would you consider those times to be good? Probably not. Even my own experience of longing for the elementary school days carries with it some danger. Just because my early school experience was good doesn't mean it was good for everyone. What about the young child who is molested, or the kid who is constantly picked on?It certainly isn't good for them. One of the dangers of nostalgia is that it can cause to forget about those who are hurting and it can give us a very near-sighted view of life. "If it was good for me, then it must have been good for everyone else," is dangerous because it anesthetizes us to people's problems, which causes us to become completely ineffective to help anyone. You can't help someone that you can't relate to.
The second danger of nostalgia is that it can paralyze us and cause us to miss life today. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a perfect example. God destroys these two cities (and not because they were so overtly gay either, read Ezekiel 16:49), but before he does, he tells Lot and his family to leave and not turn back. Lot's wife turns back and the text says that she became a pillar of salt. When we long for the good old days, we are, in turn, saying that these days aren't good...or at least not as good as "those days." If we're constantly looking backward, we become a pillar of salt. We're paralyzed by our inability to see today as something with the potential to be good. There's nothing wrong with remembering fond memories, but don't dwell on them. There's life to be lived right now.
2 comments:
Good article. When I look at the good old days, I think more of what if I had done some things differently, where would I be today. It's best to look at what is, and what will be. Obviously, you can learn from your mistakes and life experiences, but it is always better to look forward.
profound, oh father of mine. and you're right: it's best to look at what is.
even looking back and wondering what you would have done differently is kind of self-defeating and perhaps even a slight to God because all of our story makes us who we are in the now. obviously everyone would do stuff differently, but since nothing is wasted in God's economy he has used every choice to its fullest potential to create the being that we are NOW. even the retarded crap that we'd like to forget is part of our story and valuable in the end.
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