Waxing Nostalgic

A Bittersweet Pleasure

War in the Mideast. The possible reelection of Donald J. Trump. Unprecedented economic inequality. Catastrophic global warming. When this is the present, why not romp in the past? As I try to swagger into old age with originality and style, I’m abashed to realize that in many ways I’m like all the generations who have grown old before me, reveling in memories of my younger years and frequently waxing nostalgic about times that are gone. Even in the Golden Age of Greece, in fifth century BCE, Athenians looked back with longing at the glories of the past.

As one often accused of optimism, I realize that my rose-colored glasses tint the past as well as the present. Even accounting for this, when I look back at my youth, I feel it held a promise and embodied a hope that is gone today.

As a baby boomer, I felt my generation was going to change the world. The counter-cultural revolution I felt part of was going to transform how we worked and played and dressed and ate. Our world would be based on peace and love and humanity, and our music would bind us together. The Woodstock generation was idealistic. I didn’t know anyone who admitted to wanting to make money. By contrast, the most common ambition among teenagers today is to become an influencer—getting paid to recommend products on social media. We wanted to make art or join the Peace Corps. We had the Pill and free love and we reveled in our beautiful young bodies.

(I know three couples who made love on the same day they met.  Each has been married for some forty years.)

A photographer for the alumni paper at Brown got me into his studio by telling me how in later years I would be happy he had photographed me nude at 21. After he took photos, he came onto me, as I knew he would. I liked him; we made out a bit, and then I put on my clothes. Nobody felt assaulted or cheated.

Every ten years or so I come across those decorous black and white 8 x 10” photographs. As he foretold, I am pleased to have this evidence, and I think of the photographer with tenderness and gratitude. (After all this time, I’ve just remembered his name, so hello, MB, wherever you are!)   

Perhaps the pleasure of nostalgia is greatest when you share it with somebody else, maybe a classmate or a friend, when your mutual memories deepen your personal bond. Or you can practice nostalgia with a relative. As I grow older, I feel a greater closeness to my cousins than ever before, for they knew my parents, and I knew theirs, and we can revisit the past together. What binds us to each other? Those holiday meals? Those rowdy games we played? Our present-day get-togethers? I think our strongest bonds are the memories and stories we share of our mothers and fathers, and step-fathers, for our family is rife with divorce.

The other day, I felt so lonely for my mother I called up my cousin. “I can’t talk now,” she said. “It’s exactly three years since my mother died.” Her daughter was about to pick her up so they could revisit my aunt’s favorite neighborhood places. Instead of going to the cemetery, this is their annual ritual to commemorate her death.

We’re not only nostalgic for people: we’re nostalgic for a vanished way of life. I remember when we dressed up for plane trips, and our parents walked us to the gate, for there was no security check-in. It all felt very special. Today, flying is a tense and anxious experience, with long lines at security and little human assistance. I recently spent more time at JFK than I did in the air between New York and Florida.

When I was young, there were no school shootings. True, if you fell from the schoolyard swings you would bleed, for there was concrete, not rubber, underfoot. And it’s also true that we had drills about nuclear war, where we would crouch beneath our desks, which supposedly offered protection against annihilation. But we didn’t worry about dying by gunshot, which is now the leading cause of childhood death. We didn’t fear getting shot if we were at the wrong place, such as a concert or a movie theater or our classroom. We felt people were basically good.

Reveling in nostalgia may even be healthy for you. In one experiment, a group of elderly people spent a week in an environment designed to look like that of their youth. The furniture was mid-Century modern, TVs had antennas, and there wasn’t a computer screen or QR code in sight. Music from the forties and fifties wafted through the corridors; dinner might be meat loaf and Jello mold. After a week, they rated themselves as much happier than before. Their blood pressure was down, and their immune response was up.  

We can’t live in the past, nor in the simulated past. We hope our lives in the present are rich and immersive. We look forward to vacations and make plans to travel.  

But sometimes a trip down memory lane is the only trip we need.