Last revision April 14 2008
We think it
would be better if we were doing that rather than this, or it will be
better when we are there rather than here. We imagine in our mind’s eye
how it would be – and it seems so much better than what we are living
now.
This is much like
nostalgia – only nostaligia involves conjuring the past rather than the
future or an alternate present.
We think of some
place we’ve been, we recall images of ourselves and our surroundings
from that time, and these remembered scenes are steeped in a secret and
indescribable magic, a wonderful quality woven into each remembered
detail - and it is for this quality that we would so love to be there
again, to return.
But suppose you
really do go back, physically. For instance you go back to a place where
you lived or visited in your childhood, or in your university years, or
whatever. Sometimes the magic fails to rematerialize; but sometimes it
comes back really strong, and the first moments or hours or days are
exhilarating, inspiring, wonderful.
But if you stay
there a while, for weeks or for months or indefinitely, the magic may
well fade away again as the novelty of rediscovery wears thin and life
returns to daily routine, and this fading might happen all too soon and
too quickly.
And then, if you
re-examine your cherished memories soberly, you may be surprised to
reveal that actually you were bored at the time. Or maybe it was a time
of unhappiness, during which you generally felt anything but elated and
inspired. And so you might reconsider this magic called nostalgia and
wonder if maybe it is just a kind of illusion. Could it be that my daily
life of that time and place were usually as ordinary and prosaic as my
present daily routine is now?
But no, you know that that infinitely unique
scent in the kitchen, that particular glow of light in the back yard,
that thrilling vastness of sky, really were there. You are convinced of
the veracity of your memories, and are certain that you are not now
adding something to them in the way that a photographer might retouch a
postcard sunset for greater vividness of
colour.
Isn’t it true that
there is a mysterious, undefinable, richly textured quality in virtually
all of our experiences, but that this quality usually stays just beneath the surface, as if
we don’t quite attend to it in the present, but that it is later
released to the surface and revealed us in times of revery and
nostalgia?
Then there are
those moments when one feels truly peaceful, as occasionally after a day
of hard work or creative activity, or after a long walk in the woods, or
in the morning after having slept profoundly, or you can choose your own
example, when that special quality surfaces in the present tense, in
waking reality, and there is the warm crackling of flames in the
fireplace and the deep smell of pine for instance, as good and strong as
nostalgia ever was.
If one could learn
to liberate the vital essence of personal experience from the shell of
daily routine in a continual and durable way, one might come to know the
richness and depth that are possible now and every day. And then might
one be set free from the obsessions of nostalgia and of forever wishing
for something better, and no longer be deceived by what often turn out
to be their ultimately fruitless
promises.