Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

On NPR this morning, they were having a show where they really got deep into the connection between art and emotion, which was pretty interesting in and of itself, but one statement in particular really stuck with me.

"Nostalgia is to emotion what idealism is to the intellect."

Now, that hit me hard because I had been thinking recently about the phenomena known as the "good old days" and how human beings have a tendency to look back at the past with a not-necessarily-accurate impression that things have gotten progressively worse since then. Similarly, many people, when confronted with the complexities and responsibilities of life, look back on their childhoods thinking, everything was so simple (and therefore better) then.

And yet, when we were children, typically, we couldn't wait until we grew up.

So what is the resolution to that contradiction? Is it simply that, when we were children, we didn't know what being an adult was really like? Was it a "the grass is always greener" effect? Or is it a matter of the human tendency to remember good things more strongly than bad things.

I had never quite settled the question in my mind, but I had been laboring under the assumption that the answer would be one idea or the other. Surely we would live our lives differently depending on the answer: Were things really better then or is it an illusion?

Then this simple statement on the radio gave me sort of an epiphany.

Idealism. The sense that perfection is, (or should be,) attainable. To be sure, it can lead to profound disappointment and dissatisfaction when the world inevitably fails to live up to that perfection. Yet without it, we can settle into cynicism and complacency, withdrawing into a selfish pleasure-pain morality and not making an effort to improve things around us.

Perhaps nostalgia is similar? It tends to be less specific than idealism, tied to a time or place in the subconscious that may or may not have ever existed in the real world. Nostalgia is bittersweet. Remembering the good times at the same time as recognizing that they are past, never to return.

I remember a recent trip back to Colorado. I spent a day visiting all my old landmarks. The house where I grew up. The park across the street. The path that ran alongside a local creek. My old High School. The Boulder Library and the bike paths near there. I wasn't always happy then, but revisiting those places made me feel as though I had a history. Sitting on a bench at the playground where I played so often as a child, recognizing so much but mourning the loss of the playground equipment which had long since been replaced.

It made me a little sad that they had changed all of the equipment. It wasn't what I remembered. I couldn't run my fingers over the wooden posts and metal slides that I had touched all those years ago.

And yet, when I took a step back, I realized that the new equipment is probably a lot more interesting and safe to the children who play on it now. Do I really want them to preserve the landmarks of my youth, even if it means depriving the children growing up today?

Nostalgia is to emotion what idealism is to the intellect.

All of us have a recognition that the world isn't perfect while at the same time desiring that it should be. With idealism, we look at specific problems; war, famine, drugs, crime, and we think, why can't it be better than this? Why isn't it better? We envision a world that meets our definition of what a perfect world should be, then compare it with reality.

Nostalgia, I think, is the same desire, but it arises from the subconscious, the place where our dreams come from. Even though we may be happy with our lives for the most part, we will always have some level of dissatisfaction. It's human nature.

Nostalgia is the subconscious mind's attempt to create our ideal emotional environment, cobbled together from our memories and our deepest passions. If we are stressed about relationships or finances, we create a mental image of a time when we were free of those responsibilities, when things were simpler. We don't imagine the bad times, the problems we had then, because that would violate the whole purpose of creating this ideal environment.

So then, what do we do with nostalgia? Like idealism, I think it is a two-sided coin. We must recognize that the world we are reminiscing about is not altogether real. Certainly, it is based on reality, but only the good parts, or at least the parts that meant the most to us. As such, we must do our best to not let these nostalgic feelings make us unhappy in the present. We must not let feelings of "things were easier" or "things were better" taint our feelings about our lives in the present.

Yet nostalgia can help us to make a connection with our own pasts, to remember the good and maintain a sense of where we've been. It provides us with a continuity, a reason to believe that the person we used to be has truly become the person we are now. It provides us with a broader perspective, the ability to see beyond the valley of our current problems.

The dilemma remains: How can we reconcile our desire for simpler times with the recognition that those "simpler" times may have never really existed the way we remember them? That's not a question that anybody else can answer for us. But maybe if we can find a way to use that desire as a driving force for improvement while at the same time recognizing that improvement does not necessarily have to mean turning back the clock.

Nostalgia is to emotion what idealism is to the intellect.

It's bittersweet, but it's better than nothing.

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