Picking up the Pieces

NOSTALGIA:

Nos-tal-gia  [nuh-stal-juh] n. : A bittersweet yearning for things, persons, or situations of the past.

I hate nostalgia. I seriously loathe it. Now, I must admit that I had arguably the best childhood known to man, and I could not conjure up a single complaint about it if I sat here and tried with all of my might to do so for days on end. No; I don't hate nostalgia for that reason at all. In fact, some might venture to say that I should be the most passionate lover of all things nostalgic that this world has ever known, but here's my quandary: I hate expressing about 99% of emotions, or to put it more accurately, I am entirely inept when it comes to effectively expressing 99% of my emotions. In other words, I don't have feelings for feelings. Thus, I have a very difficult time looking back on things, gushing over memories, indulging in the sweet act of reminiscing and falling into an all-too glorious stupor of past happenings and encounters. And I probably sound like the epitome of a stone-cold, frigid, callous, dispassionate loser, but I promise you I'm not. On the outside, perhaps. But that is solely because I have perfected the art of turning every feeling other than happiness into stoicness (That's not a word, but we're going to pretend it is). You see, I don't really hate nostalgia; I hate what it does to me. I hate that it elicits emotions that I cannot fully control. I hate how it makes me want to curl up in a ball and never move again for fear of growing up too soon and losing touch with the oh-so-simple luxuries of childhood and familiarity. I hate all of it.

But lately, I have been realizing more and more that things end. Chapters come to a close. Pages turn. And I, the uncontrollable control freak, cannot control everything. Change is inevitable. It demands to be noticed; it feasts off of the prospect of throwing people - of my age especially - into a tizzy of uncertainty and a desperate desire to get one's greedy hands on a rewind button, or at least a pause button. A friend of mine recently asked me if I thought it was only possible to let the joy of the moment be felt in its entirety when the moment itself had passed. You know, can we only recognize the greatness of the now when the now has become later? And I had never really happened upon a query that was so beautiful yet so devastating all at once. Because I believe it's kind of true, that we cannot fully fathom greatness until that greatness has become but another thing that can only be visited in memories, though I wish quite desperately that it wasn't true. Let me make my point a little bit clearer here. My dad has been coaching high school basketball for my entire life. I've grown up on the game, and I love it. I love watching it; I love going absolutely insane in a thunderous, adrenaline-pumped, even sweaty crowd; I love seeing my dad and his team succeed and play with confidence and class and humility and undeniable talent. But it wasn't until last week, when the team's history-making, acclaim-worthy season came to an inopportune end that I was forced to realize that yet another chapter of my life was coming to an end. Never again would I be able to watch every one of those games. I couldn't say, "Well, we've always got next season." Heck, next year, I will be lucky to see one or two games when I come home from college at Christmas time. And this discovery floored me. And not in a good way. It left me with an awful, discontented taste in my mouth. How could I not have noticed at least once in these past eighteen years what a huge part of my life this simple thing had become?

And that's what sucks about nostalgia. Not only does it leave you with a longing for the past, but it also leaves you with guilt, with an almost overpowering yearning to go back in time and notice what you missed and relish what had gone unrelished for far too long, with a need to give your past self a tap on the shoulder and a quick, whispered reminder that moments all have one thing in common: They're fleeting.

But you can't always do that. Actually, time travel has not been made possible yet, so you really can't do that ever. But you can do one thing. You can make a conscious effort to pause and to notice and to frolic in what would ordinarily be left untrodden. Change happens, and in writing my own book, I am realizing each day that life's chapters, like those in my book, have to end at some point. I mean, who wants to read a book with one chapter? So, yes, change is here; it's now; it's twenty years down the road; it's not leaving any time soon. And with each change, we are left with memories of the previous chapter, left with thoughts about those words which initially rested unassumingly on the page or two before, words that can be reread at our own disclosure. And that's okay. It's okay to be okay with memories being just that: memories. It's okay to move on, to pick up the pieces, and to let life's Novelist continue penning away at the undoubtedly incredible plot that lies ahead. And yes, it's even okay to be a little nostalgic every once in a good while, to relinquish hold on an overly stoic facade and bask in great memories. To let memories endure and then spur you on in your current engagements.

Lesson learned. Never, ever, ever let the now go untreasured until later.