Nostalgia?

I Haven't blogged as such for a while. Sorry about that, but a combination of hectic-harry life and the 30 day music challenge has gotten in the way.  hahahahaha

Just read that sentence back. Hark at me?..................like I have an army of avid followers gasping for the next "edition" or my silly little life.................... behave!
Ahh the good old days! The music, the sights, the sounds of a place that we can never journey back to. But why do these memories of times past feel so nostalgic? What makes these memories so different from remembering what I had for breakfast last Tuesday? Nostalgia is exceptionally good at making us feel better when times are tough. It’s a little mental pick-me-up that reminds us of good times, good friends and a why it’s great to be alive.


Nostalgia……to me its the way I look at things long gone with time, whether unpleasant or pleasant experiences.

It is the best way to celebrate pleasant past experiences and to keep the fire burning, the memories alive and fresh like it was just yesterday. To blow them out of proportion so much so that the good times override all else.
Is it the best way to heal a wounded past? To remember lessons learnt the hard way, and to know its gone. To know that no odd is insurmountable and to acknowledge victory over challenges.

It is the best way to know I did my best, at enjoying it or at salvaging it. It cannot be bad to be nostalgic when I’m at peace with my past and when I have laid it to rest for whatever it was, good or bad, and that it's there to call on again.

Anyhoo..........lately I have "chatted" with old mates, either on Facebook, (hence inverted commas), or properly on a telemaphone in deep joy, like we used to back in the day. (I suddenly came over all Stanley Unwin-ese). In the process of these good chats, it suddenly struck me rather over-emotionally what joy it was to reminisce, but that afterwards there was the tinge of pain for the passing of wonderful days that were, with those people. My, I am a silly old fool at times. How the years have whizzed by. How caught up do we get, so that we don't realise the passage of time, or the people we connected with but became dis-connected from for a plethora of reasons?


I ask myself if it is really 32 years since I left school? Is it really 8 years since I last saw my mate Alan? Is it really 26 years since I "gigged" at Riverside with Matt as "Strangers In White", (what WERE we thinking with that name?) as support for "The Storm"? Is it really 12 years since The Manor shut? THE best club I have ever set foot in. Is it really 3 years on my own as a single parent, and 3 years alone?
I tell myself at least I experienced almost all there is to experience, one way or another, in life, but it seems cold comfort in some ways for where I find myself, even though I would not change my life in respect of my wondrous son, who has made me a better person, and changed and enriched my life in so many ways. C'est la vie........... we get what we deserve, based on the choices we make I guess. Mustn't grumble...............(reminds me of Mark n Lard).


Still I am planning to catch up with the old friends by visiting them in the coming months. If the mountain wont come to Mohammed's place for a coffee.................


To feel nostalgia does not necessarily mean you want to turn away from the present or the future; it’s enough to feel that you can’t ever go back to a place where you were happy. Sometimes I think even happiness doesn't matter, that even places where you were unhappy can call out to you, if enough time has passed. And by “place” I mean, of course, “time”.

Postscript:

A wise person just told me of "scary sentiments" and I love that way of putting it.  Also, the wise person  commented about us looking good now in the future which is pretty profound. 

However, the beauty of looking back right now is that it is to a time of our teens and twenties when there was endless possibility and we had the "beauty and power" of our youth as Baz eloquently put it.

Will we feel the same looking back in twenty years time at a period when we made our mistakes? When we were tainted by our grown up adventures, and forever altered by others treatment of us and the darker times.

I think the beauty of the looking back this first time is that it reminds us of an innocence maybe, but more importantly a time of freedom and worry free life, albeit that we didn't appreciate it then. The sadness for me is knowing of the possibilities and opportunities that those days represent that I missed or didn't recognise.