The past is often romanticized. Some people say they would love to visit Paris in the 1940s, forgetting that Nazis ran the city. Others dream of a “better” more “family friendly” time of yesteryears, as if minorities and women weren’t struggling to survive. That nostalgia you feel when you long for a time you’ve deemed better than your present is a lie, for the most part.
Lately, I’ve been missing home. In my memories, home is a place that symbolizes family, warmth, and familiarity. But when I truly stop to think about it, it’s a lie. Not a complete lie, but a lie all the same. My home is noisy, packed, and the people who inhabit it are rarely in agreement. I still love it, but that doesn’t mean that it lives up to the image I’ve painted of it in my head during my time away.
This is a common occurrence, I’ve come to find. Yet, out of all the different kinds of nostalgic memories we materialize for ourselves, the most harmful are those that we KNOW, on a basic level, weren’t as great as our memories would like to believe. Maybe it’s an ex whose memory you hold to be dear now but were miserable with during the actual run of the relationship, or maybe it’s a place that you hated being in and now think back to and say “yes, I loved it there”. These were lessons. They seem great now because you are not actively experiencing them, but that doesn’t change the fact that they were rough moments that you probably wouldn’t want to experience again– and if by the off chance you do, you’ll quickly relearn the lesson.
Every now and then, we all need a reminder that the good things are not behind us, but rather in front. And maybe some of those memories are good and cherishable, but they are still only memories. You’ve changed, you’ve learned, you’ve grown. Now it’s time to create memories that you can actually look back on fondly without ever having to remind yourself that they aren’t what they appear to be.