Nostalgia, and the danger it implies

Good morning, afternoon, evening.

I will preface this by saying I have led a blessed life by almost any metric that you can have. I come from a solid middle-class suburban home in the Midwest (Mom, Dad, Sister, my myriad of pets, no picket fence though). As a young man, I experienced very few traumas. I believe that this was because as independent as I was taught to be by my parents, I also lived a sheltered life in a very small town. Once I became a teenager and gained that golden grail of a driver’s license and stretch my toes out into the larger world things changed, but I digress.

I wanted to talk a bit about nostalgia. That warm fuzzy feeling that encourages us to by chicken McNuggets because we haven’t had them in years. Of course it also comes with the knife edge of remembering that chicken McNuggets are kinda gross. But you don’t catch that until after you’ve eaten a couple. That is nostalgia though. a fond memory tainted by the reality of things.

Born in the summer of 1976, raised on great toy commercials that were disguised as cartoons, and the rise of alternative and grunge I am solidly Generation X.

I fondly remember the years that forged the core of who I am as a person. The music, the cartoons, the movies, the first whispers of the internet invading homes. Of summer concerts and warm evenings at a baseball field or along a river. Of homecomings, and the VP Fair. Of chilly Halloween evenings running around in horrible costumes manic with the energy of a thousand candy bars. Of Christmas dinners and the twinkling lights. Memories of cold winter nights when there isn’t a cloud in the sky and that first intake of breath when the cold air stings your throat and sends a shiver down your spine. Of the smell of Spring and the rainstorms. Or my favorite the colors of fall and the smell of burning leaves.

What I don’t like to think about are things like the ever present threat of nuclear war. I don’t like to think about the girls and women I knew who were quite often harassed; not only by students but by teachers. I don’t like to remember the people that feared HIV and AIDS so much that they had zero compassion when a child, through no fault of their own, died from it. I don’t like to think about the way that people I considered to be open minded and modern would react when someone of a different color would walk by, or how you should avoid going to St. Louis because it was “dangerous” when what they meant was “it has blacks” That anything that made you different, or stand out, was considered shameful. I don’t like to dwell on the things I’ve done, or the words that I’ve said that hurt others; sometimes just to fit in, sometimes because it felt good to feel superior.

These are all things we keep hidden away, tucked in a part of our minds that we try to ignore. These things are different for everyone, but we all have them.

We all love to remember the good times and use that as a basis for the way things should be now without accepting that the bad parts still exist and need to be eradicated.

This is not new. This is something that has existed as long as there have been generational divides.

If you’ve ever heard “If it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them.” or been told that. It ignores the fact that it probably wasn’t as good as they remember (Nostalgia does that) but it’s not even the same world that they grew up in.

The next generation isn’t us. The former generation isn’t either. An everyone’s experiences are different. Keep that in mind next time you get an urge to buy McNuggets.

And always remember that Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

M