I’ve been having this really nagging feeling at the back of my head. For some reason, over the past few months, I’d even dare to say over the past year plus, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about reconnecting with my past. I think it really started when I was able to find a friend whom I knew in elementary school, and found that despite the years we’ve spent apart, and whatever events in our lives may have shaped us in that time, we were still capable of being really good friends. Since that time, I’ve been on sort of a hunt for people through the course of my life that I’ve considered important, and have always regretted letting them fade into the background of my story.
Part of it has to do with nostalgia. Fond memories of past events, or people tend to carry a lot of weight to them. So much weight in fact, that some people suffocate underneath it, and can only live in the past, unable to face the present, or plan for the future. I’ve been fortunate that I have been, for the most part, able to live in the present. However, I do still hold a lot of great memories from when I was younger, at least in my head.
The danger in nostalgia is that you may remember things in a much better light than they were actually cast. Psychologically, as we get older, it’s much easier to remember the good things, and ignore the bad things, if for no other reason than it’s to keep you sane. This can lead to some pretty warped memories for those who have been through particularly trying times in their life, where it seems as if their very history has been rewritten. This is how people can end up in severely abusive relationships, as they can only remember the good, and figure that the bad won’t last as long, despite the fact that it might have lasted over the course of the entire relationship already.
Despite that, there is something rewarding when you have nostalgic memories of people, and later, when you reconnect with these people, you find that the relationship with these people only serve to further improve your memories of them in the past. I can’t describe the feeling that you get when you see someone again after a very long time, I’m talking decades, and find that as much as you cherished the friendship and companionship that you had with them before, that when you’re with them now, it’s even better. There’s just something supremely satisfying about feeling like holding onto the memory of a particular someone is validated because they’re still awesome so many years later.
I’ve always said it’s important that the people you choose to be in your life are good people. To some degree, I apply this to people that I keep in my memories as well. Obviously, memories are a little harder to control, and you will remember what or who you will remember, but there is still some conscious effort involved in trying to remember someone. When you’ve taken that effort to remember that person, it’s nice to know it wasn’t time or energy wasted.
Of course, this extends to people beyond just friends. One of the greatest pleasures in my life, and especially recently, has been reconnecting with teachers that I had always looked up to during my formative years. Here were these people who you you relied upon to infuse you with knowledge, to assist in your growth as a person, and the majority of what you remember about them were their mannerisms in class, and how stern they were, or how much homework they gave you. Years later, when they no longer feel the pressure of being responsible for your development as an adult, and they can let things go and just be themselves, you realize “You know, I knew I liked this person for a reason.”
To find out your teachers were honestly HUMAN! To find out their character flaws, and to know that they had similar thoughts to what you had during that same time period. Intellectually, I knew all of this happened, but to hear it for yourself in person from the mouths of the very people you looked up to as you were going through your growing pains… the only reaction I could have was to laugh, and honestly, it felt so amazing to just connect with them on that level.
To no longer have that wall of teacher and student, and to be able to relate as peers ( to a degree) has been a joy that I would never have thought plausible back then. Admittedly, it’s still weird to call them by their first name when you spent so many years calling them Mr./Ms. Whatever, but it’s such a great feeling to actually be able to do that. It almost feels like a rite of passage. To graduate from, “Hey Mr. Blankity Blank” to “Hi Mike” or whatever their actual name is. Maybe I’m just a recovering teachers pet (although anyone who knew me through high school could hardly call me that), but it’s nice to just see them again and learn more about who they were, and more importantly, who they are.
Overall, I think nostalgia is important, because it’s hard to know where you’re going when you don’t know where you’ve been. Looking back to the past allows you to take stock of what you’ve done to get to the point of where you are. However, it’s just as important to follow up on it, lest it stay just a pleasant memory, with no real basis in reality after too much time has passed. To find out that things or people who filled you with so much joy in the past are still capable of doing so; I think that just makes the memories even better, but also, they help you to further your growth, because you realize that you haven’t been fooling yourself for all that time. I believe, with that under your belt, you find yourself able to enjoy even more so, the new events and experiences that will come into your life. I recommend reconnecting with your past. It’ll make your future that much brighter.
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