My Nostalgia Problem

What do you do when every day is mundane?

Something weird happened 500 years ago, 200 years ago, 20 years ago, and again today. Some guy, somewhere, in their own language, drunkenly placed their hand on their friend’s shoulder and uttered some form of the words “remember the good ole’ days.”

What in the world is up with the good old days? It seems like the time that’s passed us by nearly always seems, well, good…

I specifically remember the absolute shitstorm of anxiety and stress back in my college days, and hell, the bullying that was my early teens — and yet, they’re still the good old days.

Why is it that we can sit down and wistfully look back on our lives and say “things were better back then” when we, in fact, know that there were both good and bad events that happened?

What is it about nostalgia that seems to overwrite the shitty with the good?

This is the exact thought I was having when I was spiraling in an existential dread kind of manner the other day. I kept on telling myself, “just be present, stop looking back, you’re missing the now,” but it’s always been a problem.

Thinking too much about the future, feeling nostalgic about the past, and not being grateful for the present, it’s an epidemic — the irony of which isn’t lost on me as people have been reduced to tiny square footage apartments in an actual pandemic here in 2020.

But somehow, the internal struggle supersedes the external one.

I started to analyze the ‘why.’ Why is it that we remember the past as a rainbow and the present as the rain? And what I found made a lot of sense.

The present was exactly that; rain. It wasn’t a storm or a hurricane or a storm. It was consistent, gentle, refreshing rain. But much like one warm day of many warm days, it wasn’t memorable.

What Stands Out Over 100 Days?

In the last 100 days, what do you remember? I’d wager that the answer is mostly nothing. This is amplified because a global pandemic has made our routines even more of a routine.

The fact is that when everything is the same, day in day out, it all blends into one. It’s nearing the end of November now; it feels like it was March a week ago.

We have positive days, we have negative days, we laugh, we stress, we enjoy a lovely coffee in the sun, and we snuggle up in the cold. These are some of the most human, slice-of-life kind of moments we live, absolutely beautiful, and yet they get lost in a sea of similar ‘mundane’ activities.

It’s a cognitive bias called the peak-end rule that affects the way we commit things to memory. It prioritizes emotional highs and lows (distance from our baseline emotional state) and how things end.

• This is why you remember the break-up and not the 99 days of a loving relationship.
• It’s why you remember the vacation and not the 300 odd days of working.
• It’s why you look back and think “good ole’ days” instead of “eh, there was the good and the bad.”

Because we’re at a baseline of 6/10 most days, and we look to escape in our memories. The peak-end rule kicks in, and we obviously think back to the “good” memories instead of the bad. This is why nostalgia’s an escape. Why enjoy the present when our selective memory can show us a highlight reel, right?

It’s A Problem

Why? Because escapist fantasies aside, this is our life. It’s made up of a collection of days, and we ought to understand that that right there is the bulk of our existence. The hills and valleys are cool, but the flat terrain is beautiful too, and hey, it’s mostly flat — if it was all hills and valleys, that would suck.

There’s a great quote by Peter Adeney.

“The key to a great life is simply having a bunch of great days. So you can think about it one day at a time.”

And with that, I found that the only way to enjoy the terrain and not constantly crave the hills, the only way to understand what I’ve got going for me in the present, is to be active in looking for it.

Instead of figuratively walking around, headphones in, lost in thought, I needed to identify the days and pay attention to them. I needed to be in tune with how I was feeling and what was going on underneath — screw this autopilot situation.

The Solution

You’ll hear a lot of people preach these, so let’s get them out of the way.

• Gratitude journaling.
• Meditation.

Are they over-recommended? Yes. Do they work? Hell yes.

Writing down what you’re gracious for in your life or, on a micro-level, your day is one of the easiest ways to put your day under a microscope and take in the fact that it was indeed good.

Meditation is the closest thing to a third-person view of yourself. It puts your life in perspective as if you were looking at it like a friend might.

These both work; that’s why people always recommend them. But what’s worked for me, you ask?

Dot Point Retrospectives

Not very innovative, but quarterly retrospectives have been my reset button.

Every 3 months, I’d write down not what I’m gracious for, but things I’ve done and how I’ve felt. This isn’t as raw as something you might have written in the moment, but I actually prefer it that way.

All of a sudden, when I feel like I’ve done or accomplished nothing, I’m pleasantly surprised. When I feel like I haven’t had any experiences, it not only forces me to think back and recall the experiences, but it shows me that I have been doing things, and I have been putting in the effort.

It’s not far enough in the past that I’m nostalgic, and it’s not a small chunk of time where I fail to see how it fits in with my wider timeline.

This exercise has been a lifesaver with my nostalgia problem, and as we come closer to the year ending, I’d encourage you to think back on the year and how far you’ve actually come, for sure.

But if you struggle with nostalgia, when the clock strikes midnight on new years eve, and we tuck away this ass of a year, think back to the start of October instead.

What did you do? How did you feel? What was your routine? Jot them down, and feel good about yourself. You’re doing the best you can, and everything doesn’t have to be a rollercoaster to be a ride.

Stay safe, and seize the day.

Cheers,

Sah