Nostalgia

Today I randomly saw a magazine cover of the magazine AARP. It had Paul McCartney on the cover—who is ironically 64! But I was immediately reminded that my great aunt had that same magazine on her coffee table one day when I recently came to visit. She and I were never especially close, but seeing the magazine made me miss her a little bit. I thought about my family—especially my mother and grandmother—and I wanted to go home. I got a glimpse of the familiar and it made me want more.

Have you ever had it happen that you hear, smell, or see something that instantly reminds you of something that happened to you or someone you knew in the past? For a moment or two you become completely defined by nostalgia. You get emotional. You gladly sacrifice the now for a moment in your mind. I don’t know, I just think that memory can be one of God’s greatest gifts.

But I think that one of the reasons why this strikes such a chord with me is that I have actually left the familiarity of home. I have something to remember. I feel like that is such an imperative part of growing up. Even if we eventually come back, I think that everyone should leave home (and by that I mean the city and/or state or country of their childhood and adolescence). If I hadn’t left, there is no way I would be the man that I am today.

Plus, it changes your attitudes about home and family. I now look at those things with affection and love—something I never felt when I was living at home (after all, I was the typical teenager who talked about leaving every 5 minutes only to actually leave and begin to realize how good it was all along. Such is life.). But in my heart of hearts I know that I would feel only bitterness and remorse if all I knew was home. I see so many of my friends who never left home and I feel so much pity for them. A desire for a maintained comfort zone and/or a lack of money has robbed them of personal growth. What a shame. In fact, my friends that actually left home are, by far, happier than my friends who stayed home for college.

What does all of this have to do with Paul McCartney on a magazine cover? Not much. What it does have to do with is memory and nostalgia. I gladly have both of them. Maybe they should be specific goals of people. How many times have you ever set as one of your goals, “I want to live this time so that I will look back on it with nothing but nostalgia”? Maybe it is naïve and impossible. No, I don’t think so.