Memories and Nostalgia

It fascinates me to see how folks can think about the past.  Certainly, there are built-in aspects of life that are given to this.  Birthdays, anniversaries and the like are designed to pull us back to the past.  We celebrate the numbers of years since the day of our birth.  We can celebrate all kinds of anniversaries---wedding, graduation, etc.  As I ponder this, two ways of engaging the past emerged in my mind. 

The most frequent way we refer to thinking about the past is to talk about memories.  Memories are, as St. Augustine said centuries ago, the way we keep the past in our present.  By this he meant if we did not remember things, there would be no past.  We would only have the present.  The other way of dealing with our past is with some form of nostalgia.  Some people might consider memories and nostalgia to be the same thing, but I choose to differentiate them. 

Memory is really the human capacity to keep a narrative of something that happened in our past.  I call it a narrative, because the memory is packaged in our brains by a context and a story.  We remember by telling this story, even if it is a brief story.  It is not unusual someone else’s memory melds with our own.  For example, we celebrate our birthday, but I don’t know anyone who actually “remembers” his or her actual birth day.  I know I can’t push my memory back earlier than about four-years old.  In some cases, my parents story of the early me helps form my own understanding of myself and my memory of me. 

The other form by which we deal with the past is through nostalgia.  I do think nostalgia seems to function like memory, but nostalgia has a feeling component that is not always present in memory.  Nostalgia is a kind of longing for---even sentimentally---for things in the past.  This is where we get the phrase, “the good ole days.”  Again, this is usually crafted around a kind of story of those good old days.  We remember them in a way that validates and values them and more than just mere memory.  It is nostalgia. 

While there are all the examples of personal memories and nostalgia, I am interested right now in the community or even national expression of both ways of dealing with the past.  Some of these are very predictable, such as Martin Luther King, Jr day.  A different kind of aspect of the past also comes into play.  A good example of this would be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of things like the Moon walk in 1969.  A game older people play is to ask each other where you were or what were you doing when this happened.  Younger folks can play their own version of this game with the 9/11 disaster. 

1969 was an amazing year for memorable things.  And this far away, that year and the experiences in that year can cause some nostalgia.  A recent spate of articles lifts up highlights of that year.  Indeed, there was the landing on the moon---and yes, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing.  It was a year in which Vietnam roared on.  For movie buffs, “Easy Rider,” appeared on the big screen.  And of course, that was the year of Woodstock.  The tumultuous ‘60s were coming to an end, but it sure didn’t feel like it at the time.  

I remember much of this.  But I am not sure I have much nostalgia about any of it.  It was a very formative time for me, as I was working my way through school and trying to shape the kind of person I was choosing to be.  The ‘60s were formative because it was a time of rampant anti-authoritarianism.  This often combined with an anti-institutionalism.  It felt like traditional American ways of life were breaking up.  It was a time of racial issues, along with feminist, global and sexual issues.  The key for me was seeing a significant strain of meaninglessness in the lives of so many. 

To describe that period in such a fashion explains why there is not much nostalgia for me.  They were formative days, but not the good old days.  There is nothing to go back to.  And most importantly for me, that was the period my deeper spiritual formation was happening.  I came to experience a God who was much more in the future than in the past.  That God was more creative and less preserving.   

Tradition was ok, but revelation and creation was where we were heading.  I felt like my whole process of making meaning in my life---making sense of life---would be to engage, appreciate and obey this God who would call me into new things with new possibilities.  I would find hope in that and not despair.  I do have memories of those days and that process.  But I don’t have nostalgia. 

There is no nostalgia because I feel like I am still engaged with and committed to that same God.  That God and I are still in process.  We are still working out a future---a future that soon enough will be past. Our job is to be fully in the present---making the most of it.  I love being involved with other spiritual folks on their way.  We have much to do.  The problems of our age are big---at least as big as the ‘60s: global warming; immigration, economic inequality, etc. 

Looking back can be fun.  Looking forward is where it’s at.  It’s where God is at and that’s where I want to be.