Healing Steps Towards a Brighter Future

What from the present do you think you’ll be nostalgic about in ten years?

This is an interesting question for me; I don’t know that I care much for the word nostalgia, however. Allowing myself to be hung up on rhetoric for one moment, nostalgia implies a certain wistfulness or longing for experiences that have passed. While I’m sure that isn’t the intent of the prompt I think it does present an opportunity to opine on experiencing the past, or more germane, how I endeavor to appreciate what is no longer without clinging to the point of detraction from the present.

I’ll try to put down the thesaurus. Although I wouldn’t say I lived entirely in the past, until recently I certainly spent a lot of time there. Between selective memory, some mental gymnastics, and a degree of honest confabulation, the past definitely had some comforting places to go; nostalgia was a quick shot of dopamine. But for me, the lines between recognition, reminiscing, and rumination were gossamer at best: almost without fail it would be as if I jumped directly into rumination.

Now, I certainly do not claim ownership over the word ‘rumination’ or whether it’s interpreted as a positive or negative action, but I chose it as an encompassing collection of thought patterns that can have destructive or otherwise negative influence on my feelings and actions. What I mean by this is I would escape to a moment that felt like it was from a better time (and with exception to the previous three months, much of the last couple years felt worthy of escape) and I would seize that memory with ferocious tenacity. I would mull, relive, imagine the memory in a slightly different circumstance and experience it anew, ad nauseam; a constant tape playing thoughts of “wouldn’t it be great if [blank] again”.

So wading out of the brackish waters of those thoughts, now I do my best to stop at the recognition stage – toeing that line to earnestly avoid the tumble into reminiscence as I can predict where that will likely end. This isn’t to say I want to forget the past and ignore memories, both have critical experiences to recall for self-development and social interaction. What this does look like (for me) is a simple recognition of the thought and an appreciation for the feeling that it carries, positive or negative: “kayaking in the bioluminescent bay was surreal and stunning, I’m glad I was able to experience that” or “rupturing my Achilles tendon was pretty inconvenient but I’m growing a lot from it”. So my past experiences are still very much a part of me and who I am, I just now try to allow them passage through me as quickly as they arrive: guests at the hostel of my mind.

• Disclaimer: as with pretty much everything that is/will be in this blog, I am certainly not perfect at this practice…I don’t even consider myself proficient, I’m just trying to move in that general direction. Hoping to avoid a sanctimonious tone as that is furthest from my intent.

Given the meandering trip I just took through an aspect of my mentality, I’m going to rephrase the original prompt to something absent of nostalgia:

What from the present do you want to affect in a way that will echo meaning or purpose?

I am so grateful to be where I am today. So many aspects of my life are in an influential state that opportunities to affect are everywhere. If I had to pick just one, it would be recovering from my ruptured Achilles. I know there is a lot of work to be done and it is a long road that’s sure to be filled with moments of joy and despair, trials ending in victory and defeat. But I’m excited for the journey: the things I’m going to learn about myself, the people I’m to meet that I wouldn’t have otherwise, the stories I get to hear and the experiences I hope to share. These, I think, will echo meaning and purpose for the rest of my life.

Walk with gratitude 🙏