“I want to pause adulting and lower the difficulty settings” – A stupid shirt I saw
I’ll begin with a personal note. I’ve been away from essay writing a bit working on some other projects. I’ll work to rectify that in July. I am ever grateful that you little band of readers take the time to peruse my thoughts. That said, this essay is a contribution to the June STSC Symposium on the subject of “Nostalgia” and it’s a concept for which I have little patience for in its modern forms. This one might be a little dyspeptic. I however remain an ultimate optimist and I hope I can offer something constructive. As always, I give the caveat that anything I say in the way of admonishment applies equally to myself, if not more.
Nostalgia is a combination of the Greek “nostos” with the suffix “-algia”, respectively meaning “homecoming” and “pain”. From what I gather, the original meaning is essentially synonymous with “homesickness”. What was once a sort of straightforward idea about travelers and soldiers has become a weird modern form of escapism. And I’ll presently argue that escapism, in our common understanding, is almost never good. I partake sometimes and so do you, being the frail creatures that we are. But, I think we ought to strive to avoid it.
Seems to me that nostalgia has the contemporary meaning of engaging an activity or an artwork that causes us to think fondly over the past and simultaneously compare it with an inadequate present. It’s an exercise in envy of who we used to be or for a time lost to history. This is my critique in large part. It’s futile. Perhaps it feels good sometimes. There’s a bittersweet beauty to it I suppose, but like many things that feel good, we can easily become addicted, to the detriment of our present life and that of everyone around us. It’s not an allusion to any sublime literary work, but I think we all would like to avoid ending up like Uncle Rico from “Napoleon Dynamite”, ever reliving his high school football glory days.
No Way Back
This will sound silly and obvious, but we can’t go back. I’m not against enjoying memories. My wife and I take copious photos of our daughter as she grows up. I already cherish them and will all the more with time, I’m sure. But if I long for her to return to her infancy because I miss that cute little baby with her goofy first teeth and that giggle that erupts at the slightest prompting, I do a violence to who she is on this day. I suspect some people have more children that they aren’t really prepared to care for for eighteen or more years because they miss the baby days. I don’t think I need to say more about this folly.
A child is an extreme example perhaps, but my critique applies to more innocuous things as well. I am very fond of a few old videogames from my childhood. I replay them every few years, though perhaps less now with current and future children taking up the bulk of my free time (blessedly so, I might add). They are by any objective metric good games. There’s nothing wrong with playing them per se. But, there are times if I am indulging in this habit that I ache for the seemingly innocent days of childhood. I say seemingly because I think we often view those feelings as a longing for innocence when they are in fact a longing for a time when we were without very much responsibility.
I gave a rather inane epigraph to this piece to reflect my feelings about what we’re doing when we pine for those lost days of youth. Being a responsible adult person is hard. Life does not admit many easy answers and we’ll all drink of our fair share of tragedy. Perhaps an unfair share for some of us. Suffering is an inherent and inescapable part of life. The only way out is through, as the trite saying goes, and part of maturing is being willing to face the “slings and arrows” with dignity and navigate them with some degree of grace and ability.
Nostalgia, if I’m right about its modern expressions, obliterates our ability to deal effectively with the oft cruel vagaries of life. It’s a retreat into a false shelter, dreamed up in our heads, a remnant of a time that likely never existed. I’m sure I had my own problems at age twelve, though of a different sort.
In its worst forms, nostalgia can turn into a kind of desire for annihilation. Or a return to the womb. But the kicker is that we aren’t innocent. We never were. And we are responsible. Not to choose a course of action in a given situation or to attempt a false escape into faux-rosy memory is still a choice for a type of action. We can only become better or worse at responding to life. There is now way back. There is no escape.
Echoes in Eternity
We are fond nowadays, at least tacitly, of the idea that our actions don’t have any real consequences. Reality has another word for us. It’s a bit morbid but, think, if you just jerked both hands on the steering wheel about 20 degrees one direction on the freeway and let go, you might find yourself quickly in that “undiscovered country”. Don’t think about this often, for your sanity, but I mean only to show that there are stakes in life. What we do matters. And it matters forever. Your life is a book written in ink.
This is a great burden when faced squarely. And to be frank, it’s difficult to bear. The impulse to escape this truth I think lies at the root of our contemporary nostalgia. But you’re still just writing in ink when you engage in nostalgia. Time only moves forward. You simply write a chapter of your life in which you spent hours in front of screen doing something you’ve already done. Look, I’ve done it. I probably will do it again. But you in your fullness are not synonymous with your actions and we should get skilled at separating our behavior from our eternal value as persons. This allows us to objectively evaluate our behavior as good or bad without damning our whole being in the process.
Bearing the Burden
A better way to go through life is to learn by disciplined work to bear the burdens of life with cheerfulness and dignity and skill. On top of this, I don’t believe we were meant to bear these things alone. We are meant to be in community with others and with God.
It might feel nice for a bit to play an old videogame or watch a silly movie when life gets too hard. But it is much more fruitful and soul-restoring to talk over that problem with a close friend. Sometimes I do both. We’re after development here and maturation, not instant perfection.
At the end of it all, I believe in a supremely Good God who loves me and loves you. No burden or suffering is too great for him to bear or transform into something beautiful. If you place your trust in Him, He will supernaturally enable you to face anything that the fallen world can throw your way.
See, there is some glimmer of truth in the nostalgic impulse. And that is that things really were better once. Really, truly good. In paradise, when we walked with God in the cool of the day. But when that got ruined, God didn’t turn the clock back and regress to the good old days. He honored our free-will choices and stepped in to help us bear a burden we could not bear alone. We remain responsible, but there is freedom from ultimate consequence, through His great mercy and grace. God is after restoration not regression.
So, I believe we should seek relief from the pain of life not in pizza and old TV shows, but in the God who loves us more than anything.