Mind, Matter, and Me

I love my snapchat memories. I save almost every picture I take on snapchat because I love knowing that if I forget about it now, Ill be reminded of it in a year. I enjoy sending my one year ago today memories to the respective friends and family pictured or associated with the moment. I fucking love to reminisce. There is simply no better feeling than getting a memory and remembering the moments that surround it.

Recently, however, I have noticed that I am overly nostalgic.

If I am on an airplane and bored, I will start at the top of my photo album and go through all my photos until my eyes burn. If I am tired of being in Chicago, I will go over to Carrie and my travel instagram and re-stalk everywhere we have traveled and been to remind myself of the time I’ve spent elsewhere. The other day I thought about how old the girls I nannied are and went back and looked at all the photos and videos I had of them over our 6 years together. I literally rewatched them grow up in photos because I missed them and that time together. I unintentionally (I hope:)) torture myself with memories and feelings that I miss. And what I am realizing, as I have been sitting with this idea and the concept of nostalgia, is that it is a double edged sword that I need to adjust my grip on.

Nostalgia feeds something good and bad within me.

While I love love LOVE reminiscing, I find that I am dwelling and yearning for times that I will not go back to. It is a waste of energy to continue to do this. Do I miss living in an apartment and a house with my best friends? Yes. Do I miss college and all its shenanigans? DUH. Do I miss summers with my two best friends, ages 4 and 8? Everyday. Do I miss singing and dancing? All the damn time. Do I miss organized sports? Oh gosh yes. Do I miss traveling care free with my bestie in Europe? Ja, Sí, Oui, Ναί.

But my time is as good as wasted if I continue to do this. If I make myself sad or wishful for things that simply will never be again. Instead, what I hope to do more of during my reflections of these times, events, people, and places, is I hope to pay respect and become intentionally grateful for these things. Let the memories and feelings come back to me, acknowledge them, be grateful for them, and then move on from them. Its because of these experiences and people that I get to continue to enjoy where I am in life today. I owe who I am now, to the person I was back then. And I love who I currently am. I want to start yearning for the now because today will turn into tomorrow and tomorrow I will be wishing for today unless I change my thought pattern. It will be an endless cycle of obsession if I don’t start acknowledging my gratitude for those experiences and moving forward.

I don’t entirely know how to do that. I am figuring it all out as I go. Something I found that helps is appreciating the different stages of life and the different things they offer. Appreciating and loving the hell out of the stage of life I am in now and all the fun things that come with it. Yesterday while getting drinks with a friend we discussed how jealous we were of all the Unofficial pictures we saw on social media. But then we both said as much as we wish we were there, we wouldn’t trade where we are now for anything. We live in one of the best big cities. We are YOUNG! We can casually get a pitcher of drinks to share with friends on a Friday. We work full time jobs and we love getting paid! We are independent in the best sense of the word. We are in our twenties. We are continuously experiencing girlhood! Yes we have bad days but they aren’t all bad. We can appreciate these things in our life. The things that make it ours…

Well aanywaayyyssss that is how I hope to stop living in nostalgia but rather start acknowledging it and being grateful for both the then and the now. Anticipate that change comes with each stage of life and welcome that change and be excited for the new things that it bring. Get out of my photo album and into the current moment.

I cant believe this darn thing called time just never stops. Im trying to quit fighting the current of time and instead be in its flow.

Your nostalgic queen,

Me

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises“

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

“I thought of the blissful mundanity of life; of what a privilege it was to live it”

Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir, Dolly Alderton