Friday, April 15, 2016

Acceptance of a Sort


Nostalgia is a funny thing, the way our minds fool us into believing a certain time was better than some other certain time. Because that moment is no longer present the memories become distorted and we filter out undesirable aspects.

At the same time, there's something to be said for being able to revisit what we once knew with a different perspective. Our re-creation is not an exact duplicate of the experience itself, nor should it be, but more a shadow of that experience.

Seen or even felt through such filters, our past has the potential to become even richer, so long as we recognize the time difference and the distortions produced by these filters. Why not have a pleasant memory of something that wasn't pleasant at the time? Maybe the memory reminds us of how foolish we once were or a lesson learned from actions we shouldn't have taken (or should have but didn't).

“Everything happens for a reason” seems overly placating. “Everything that happened really happened” is more useful in my experience. Sometimes there's a lesson. Other times there's simply a feeling best described by certain songs, or movies, or paintings.

Dreams can have a similar effect. Who hasn't woken up feeling that what they just experienced was real or at least a jarring representation of something that had been real?

Living in the past is not only not desirable, it's not possible. But visiting it now and then is. And I'm not sure it's such a bad thing to remember who we are and where we've been. It's not necessarily that those times were better than these times; they were just different. And those differences add up to a richness of life worthy of celebration or, if not that, then at least acceptance of a sort.

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