Yahoo Lifestyle So long, nostalgia: How to let go of the past
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Hi, I’m Gena, and I’m a nostalgiaholic.
One whiff of aftershave with base notes of methylated spirits is guaranteed to make my eyes well up, in loving memory of my first love. The smell of bacon frying makes my nose quiver for languid Sunday brunches past. And hot-baked footpaths make me ache for the last days of high school, when casual classmates became BFFs.
Which is all pretty normal, isn’t it? Except my first boyfriend has not departed this earth. I don’t eat bacon anymore, so should probably save my tears for the pig. And I’m a member of The High School Haters cliche. I know I’m not actually in love with the past – but I’m lovesick from poring over honey-hued mind-Instagrams of it.
I knew I had it bad, but it wasn’t till last week I realised how addicted I’d become to the sweet mind-altering effects of nostalgia. A sudden stab to the heart was sparked by one terrible chain of thought: “Oh God, I think I’m alright! I’m not heartbroken over anyone anymore! I don’t miss him, or him, or him – and I’ll really miss that feeling!” I felt nostalgic for nostalgia. FFS.
At least I’m not wallowing alone in this glistening pool of tears. As Gotye wailed in Somebody That I Used To Know, “You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness.” And when he said “you”, he meant “pretty much everyone”. The song didn’t win Record of the Year at the Grammys without plucking a few all-too-willing heartstrings.
If I were to tip you upside down and shake you all about, what would fall out? Who are you carrying around; letting camp under a neural pathway, next to an eternal fire that keeps you blinking into the last embers of the past? Well, give those mind squatters notice. It’s time to implement the “Remember to Stop Remembering Program”.
First, realise you’re sick
Even the dictionary definition of nostalgia is top-shelf stuff to a nostalgiaholic: a wistful desire to return in thought or fact to a former time in one’s life. Oh, be still my heart. It was a doctor who invented the term “nostalgia” in 1920 – not a linguist or a writer, but a doctor, named Johannes Hofer, who needed a word to describe the sad mental state of Swiss mercenaries. Hofer took the Greek word nostos (returning home), sectioned it off with algos (suffering), arrived at “nostalgia”, and filed it away under “neurological disorder”.
Sure, nostalgia can be a good thing. Professor Krystine Batcho, a leading expert in the field, describes nostalgia as “the glue that keeps things together – it maintains continuity of self”. “Nostalgic memories often focus on good times with other people, and reliving those times can remind a person of their importance to others,” she adds. So it’s fine to look back fondly from time to time. But doing it too much can leave you looking back at past lovers, friends, holidays, jobs, homes and lifestyles in a more luminous light than they deserve, leaving you feeling unsatisfied about what’s right in front of you now.
Distance makes
Remember in Clueless, when Cher reassures Tai that her love rival’s not really that pretty? Her explanation: “She’s a full-on Monet. It’s like a painting, see? From far away, it’s OK, but up close, it’s a big old mess.” Well, nostalgia is the Monet of the past, and we need to look closer at the big old mess. Nostalgia eliminates all the bad things, magnifies all the good things, and compresses the remaining memories into one small, glinting, gold-plated made-in-Never-Never-Land nugget that reality’s dull, unpolished arse can never hope to compete with. Because it’s real, and nostalgia is Kate Moss. But Kate Moss in the London Look ads, not squinting in the Saint-Tropez sun. Don’t be blinded – look into the Saint-Tropez sun.
Chances are you’re not still in love with your old love. Chances are you’re in love with the idea of how you want a past love to be. Be honest, was this person really so great?
It’s not often a Daily Mail writer makes a profound statement, but Chrissy Iley did so a couple of years ago in a profile on Michael Bublé. The singer was newly married at the time and clearly in love with his wife, yet Iley noted his attitude when recalling his ex, the actress Emily Blunt. “He finds it hard to actually say her name. The relationship was powerful, yet perhaps even more so in its demise.”
Nostalgiaholics find almost everything more powerful in its demise. While everyone else breaks up with someone and hates them forevermore for their own sensible self-protection, nostalgiaholics love the previously unlovable more with every passing year. Well, this has to stop.
Nostalgia junkies compulsively look back to a time that feels safe. But that’s dangerous. We need to paint the details into our Monets by remembering the things that sucked about That Person or That Golden Era. Because only when we take the sheen off parts of the past can we hope to start fully loving the present.
Gena Tuffery is an Auckland-based writer who has recently taken up painting hyperrealism.
