” Everybody is entitled to her own nostalgia “- James Wolcott
Nostalgia has this strong fixation with the status quo. The fetish for things to remain the same. Mired in the belief that the past was perfect. Are you sure?
Disintermediation is nature’s strategy. Something that is unstoppable. Culture changes, technology advances, people’s expectations change- and the old gives way to the new and gets left behind, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.
It is not just the gadget brands( of course they resort to planned obsolescence ). Everything comes with a shelf life. The technology that we are struggling to come to terms with now will soon be a relic as something new will invariably replace it. Moving on from the past is a given certainty, whether it is moving on for the better remains a question.
Nostalgia is a beautiful lie dressed up in sepia…the saddest form of glee. It is, be definition, the least authentic of all feelings, an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.
Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson; you find the present tense but the past perfect. Where we often visit the land of lost content, you see it shining plain, the happy highways where you went and cannot come again. The vice of the aged, a seductive liar..a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or some of some past period or irrecoverable condition.
Nostalgia and a growth mindset are at loggerheads, so it is not a Hobson’s choice. Nostalgia is the enemy of optimism..
Either you believe nostalgically that the best years were in the past..or you believe optimistically that the best years are in the future.
Time to go past the past! Knowstalgia?
ENDS