A rather bright friend of mine only continues to enlighten me even as years pass between these old conversations that I still remember so well.
He once told me nostalgia is a waste of time--sad, negative, and even dangerous at times.
I remember this so clearly because I was so taken aback by it. I've always been a fan of digging out the old photo albums and barely recognizable memorabilia of younger years. I love spending a couple hours at least a few times a year looking back, thinking over my life, the people in it, how things have changed. It always made me laugh and get excited about so many things I had forgotten. A little nostalgia always did me well.
But as I am unsuccessfully adjusting to my 20s, being in this limbo between letting go of high school and everything that made it up, and trying, frantically, to grasp on to what comes next (which still remains a mystery which leaves me grabbing on to anything I see in front of me which is never good but is always better than having absolutely nothing to hold on to) has presented some presumptuous issues wherein nostalgia is an evil demonic thing eating away at every good thing I attempt to carry with me to this new stage in my life. But at the same time, I love that feeling.
Now this may sound a bit convoluted but stay with me here.
I'm currently reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. And aside from all the other genius and amazing this magnificent piece of literature brings about, the concept after which the book is named stuck with me about this whole nostalgia bit.
I will use the following excerpts to explain.
"If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest burdens.
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all the splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives comes to the earth, the more real and the truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earthly being, and become half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?
...which one is positive, weight or lightness?...”
Now I'm going to set aside theories on time and philosophies on whether or not it is a sequential line or if it is more like Hermann Hesse's metaphor of the river (always there always moving, past present and future are ever continuous and ever right in front of you).
With that said, it's safe to say that moments, or at least the exact ones we experience in life, don't repeat themselves. Each moment happens once. Some are similar, maybe almost the same, but each one happens once and only once.
So this idea of recurring moments, the eternal return, came to me as how people treat moments that have happened: nostalgia-as means for those moments to recur.
The more we think about moments and relive them in our minds, the heavier they become, the larger of a burden they become. But the weight of it makes you think. The burden can be troublesome and enlightening all at the same time. It's like the cause of this entire blog post. I visited a place that has a distinct memory for me and I couldn't help but let that moment recur over and over. It became a burden, yes. But it also allowed me to see something new in a past moment that I had never seen before.
"What happens but once...might as well not have happened at all, /if we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all."
I don't want to live a fleeting life where moments come and go without a second glance. And I don't go for all this "living in the moment" bullshit. It's a sorry excuse for doing the things you know you shouldn't. There should be a balance between weight and lightness, a balance of living in the past, present, and future because all are equally important. All should be given just as much thought as the others.
Wouldn't life just be a waste if I simply left things the second they happened? Where would I be if the things that make up my nostalgia simply disappeared? What kind of a person would I be if I didn't remind myself of the path I've taken? How would by relationships withstand? Nothing would be the way it is if the past if forgotten. Would it be better? Worse? I don't really think it can be judged that way. The same way lightness and weight can't be judged to be better or worse. But one thing I can be sure of is a loss of depth.
I think the brain is made in such a way that we need to forget some things. But not everything. There's a reason that we have the ability to recall random and minuscule moments that seemingly lack any merit to be remembered. Ignoring that just seems crazy.
I want to live a life that recurs in bits and pieces, where nostalgia and the moments I've already had sneak up into the present and future and shape things in a way that show me as a person who is living a LIFE not a moment.
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wow. first let congratulate you on a truly thought-provoking blog-post.
RispondiEliminaand then let me scathe you for reading kundera - and actually enjoying it! can't keep count of the pseudo-intellectuals, hipsters, and "free-spirits" who use this text as a manifesto for a lifestyle spent in cynical depravity, following sensation after sensation with the justification that they're living their life free from what would seek to restrain them, when in fact they are just dying by inches at a height that is so dizzying it convinces them that this is amazing.
they read a terrible book, and didn't even take away the message the author intended. (assuming you believe he had an intention - which i do, judging from his interviews, and so on.) these are coincidentally the same people who idolize nabokov and chekhov, but aren't intense enough, or even consistent enough to read them all the way through.
i'm going to assume you're not quite like that. so, i can only guesstimate that you really do have TERRIBLE taste in literature, and are apparently fascinated by philosophical discourse - via flawed characters who can live the poetry you only dare to write - as well as anything remotely similar to an existential crisis.
or am i completely off-base here?
moving forward... i think your friend is honestly wrong. nostalgia is an abstract form of memory, not a disease of the mind or dangerous, or at all a waste of time. this assumes that you wouldn't relive your life if you could. would you really? perhaps your life hasn't been as amazing as that of your average socialite or silver-spoon baby, but surely it's better than the alternative of non-existence - AKA death.
(my comment part: deux, because blogger doesn't like long responses. do you?)
RispondiEliminai'd prefer to know i am connected to my past, as much as i am connected to my future, like two arms joined by my heart, which exists in the present that is the river of my own personal timeline.
but don't be so immersed in what happened/what happens that you forget to live. that you lived or will live doesn't mean you are... at least, figuratively speaking.
lightness is not unbearable. heaviness is not unbearable. "waiting is painful. forgetting is painful. but not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering." — Paulo Coelho
to be torn between is unbearable. life is a reconciliation with extremes. life is a balancing act on a high-wire thousands of stories above a pit laced with hot spikes of jagged metal while the wind blows with hurricane intensity, and all the world gave you was a shitty drug-store brand umbrella.
what happens once has happened, and that is your life. so live it and remember it at the same time. be present and be preoccupied. be... something, instead of always searching for what you are, what you need. "you will never live if you keep looking for the meaning of life without living it." - albert camus
good post =)
Well thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I do enjoy long responses.
RispondiEliminaI'm glad you considered your initial response off base because I would have to agree with you. Now I know Kundera, especially this book, is a cliched favorite of the hipster society but that shouldn't take away its literary merit--which it DOES have.
I will tell you why.
Literature is meant to entertain or make readers think--and if it is at the top of its class, it does both. And if you found my blog post thought provoking then you will have to admit that this book presented ideas interesting enough to make me think about things in a manner in which I never have before. It is not a traditional story. Yes, these characters are not developed or "flawed" as you describe them. These characters were not created to tell a story in which they have motive and deep seated character behind every action the author makes them take. This is not a book of traditional literary devices because honestly, a book isn't always telling one specific story. Sometimes it follows certain characters' path for no particular reason and allows for a different look into human thought and various things about life all humans can relate to.
Perfect example...Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Characters are given history here and there but their story is completely overshadowed by all the commentaries on the human psyche and American life that Vonnegut gets into through the absurd story of how Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover end up meeting each other. And Vonnegut explains this idea perfectly within this very book:
"I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karbekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end."
RispondiEliminaLife is not a plot. And I enjoy novels that approach storytelling in a more chaotic manner. Although I'm not even half way though the novel, I'm already kept up at night just thinking...thinking about "fortuities" --whether things are coincidence or are orchestrated by powers we don't understand--, nostalgia, how opposites coexist and sometimes are the same, and all the other intriguing ideas Kundera presents which I don't attribute to pseudo intellectuals' philosophical discourse. And even if they are fakes trying to look smart, regardless of an artists (including novelists) intentions, the work becomes only more dynamic when a wide variety of people take many different things away from it.
Just because the fakes have taken over the images of the intellectual world, doesn't mean the works that become their favorites deserve any less respect. Not asking you to love the guy, just to recognize the things that many people, both pseudo and non-pseudo, respect him for.
In conclusion, I do not have terrible taste in literature ;)
And also, I really liked this: "be... something, instead of always searching for what you are, what you need"
but would we be as invested in trout's life if we didn't know his backstory? would we pity him without knowing that he writes science-fiction for porn-mags? and thus become surprised when he's in the restaurant with the sunglasses on his face acting, for all intensive purposes, like a classic hipster kid?
RispondiEliminaa book isn't always telling one story, but it is telling you... something. it is a narrative, and that narrative goes somewhere - even the ones who claim not to. words represent ideas and ideas are never stagnant. they are dynamic. so an entire tome full of words will always be "about something", because it isn't about traditional literary devices. there is no "traditional story". those are just categorical nonsense.
stories have a beginning, middle and end. why? because you can't avoid being finite in something that has a page length. people might want to break free of what they feel is stifling, but in the end, all they're doing is trying to find their own voice, and in doing so, they seem to disparage the voices of others; pretend like their merit never existed just because they can't use it.
life is a plot, whether fortunately or unfortunately, because a plot is a sequence of events, and life has this feature to it, but that doesn't mean that life is ONLY a plot.
i didn't like the book because the ideas it creates aren't ideas i enjoy. and while i realize that just because some annoying people associate with a thing doesn't make it annoying too, i still want to avoid it because i don't to associate with them by proxy. i'd rather avoid their aesthetic altogether - and thankfully the world is big enough to let me do so, mostly.
RispondiEliminahowever, i concede that the book has merit, and i respect him for creating it. but that is all. these things i thought about long before i even knew who kundera was, or vonnegut, for that matter.
think your taste in literature was saved when you used vonnegut to support your argument, haha. i'm glad you were able to find inspiration in the book, but hopefully not the kind that fuels the rest of cliched hipster pseudo-literary journals.
and thanks for the compliment about that one line i wrote =)