Bracing for nostalgia
07/11/15 05:09
Memory is a rather strange thing. As we grow and age, our memories can shift and change with us. I’ve blogged before about how my siblings and I have different memories of the same events. I’m sure there is a degree of this in every family. It is a part of human nature to sift and sort through memories, emphasizing certain recollections and repressing others. In the cold of winter, I can’t remember exactly what it felt like to be too hot while working outdoors in the summer. When summer returns, I can’t remember the bite of winter wind on my face. I know these things exist, but I find myself at a loss for words to describe them.
When I tell stories of my childhood, I rarely mention mosquito bites and bee stings and skinned knees and splinters. I rarely remember those things when I think of those days. Probably every person has some sense of nostalgia: a sentimental longing for the past. The problem is that the past about which we wax poetically may have existed only in our minds. The remembrances are rarely the same as the reality was.
Brace yourself! We’re in for a few years of overly sentimental remembrances filled with nostalgia. As the fiftieth anniversary of the events of the late 1960s roll around, there will be plenty of nostalgia. This year saw the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery freedom march. And we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first Peanuts television special. And next year we can celebrate the 50th anniversary of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
I doubt if there is much nostalgia for the 50th anniversary of Taster’s Choice freeze dried coffee, but there will probably be a television special or two focusing on the Beetles last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
There are plenty of nostalgia 50th coming in the next few years. 2019 should be a banner year with the Woodstock anniversary alongside the first moon walk (on the actual moon by Neil Armstrong, not the dance by Michael Jackson). It is also the anniversary of the release of Easy Rider, which happens to be the first movie I attended Susan before we were married.
I suspect that we Baby Boomers will drive the Generation Xers and Millennials up the wall with our nostalgia. I can remember being put off by the nostalgia of our parents’ generation. There was a time when popular culture was so romantic about the victories of World War II that you would have thought that every one that age had personally been present for the storming of the beaches at Normandy and then returned to Times Square for a romantic kiss captured by the photographers.
We’ll probably be no different. So, for the record, I wasn’t at Woodstock. I did buy the record album and played it a bit too loud for the comfort of my neighbors in the dormitory I presume. I did have an Easy Rider poster on the wall and for a month or so I called my roommate “Billy,” and he called me “Captain.” There was no particular resemblance to Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda and the biggest motorcycle I ever rode was a borrowed 350 cc Honda driven around town a few times.
I suppose that the events of the 1960s shaped the culture of our time as surely as the events of the 1940s shaped the culture of the years that followed. I just don’t want us to get so nostalgic that we become dishonest about our times.
My generation hasn’t exactly been stellar in our contributions to the future. We have been a bit too self absorbed and selfish to solve the problems that we identified in our youth. The wealth gap between rich and poor is greater than it was when we came into our adulthood. The gender pay gap has not been overcome. Poverty persists and there are more homeless on the streets now than in our youth. We have over consumed fossil fuels and left the climate warmer than it was before our time. We have not made racism a thing of the past nor achieved world peace.
The truth is that even though the 1960s were tumultuous times for our country, they probably were not more so than the times in which we are currently living. Injustice and violence are still threats to civil society that need to be resisted. War continues to ravage and destroy lives around the globe.
I suppose that nostalgia is inevitable and the nostalgia of my generation will seem quite oppressive to those who are younger than us if for no other reason than that there are so many of us. They call us boomers in part because there were so many of us born in those post World War II years.
For the most part, I have no plans to get caught up in all of the reunions and commemorations and nostalgic events of the next few years. I find it more interesting to have a conversation with a member of Generation X or a Millennial. Quite frankly, I’m more interested in talking about the present and the future than I am in telling stories about the past. We shared some hard times and some good times. We made some good choices and a few bad. We had our triumphs and tragedies. We contributed to the stories of our people. But our story only makes sense if it is connected to the stories of those who went before and those who follow us.
As we look back, we have an obligation to tell the truth about the past. We also have an obligation to realize the importance of the events of times other than our own.
As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told the crowds in Washington in 1963, “We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. . . . Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”
When I tell stories of my childhood, I rarely mention mosquito bites and bee stings and skinned knees and splinters. I rarely remember those things when I think of those days. Probably every person has some sense of nostalgia: a sentimental longing for the past. The problem is that the past about which we wax poetically may have existed only in our minds. The remembrances are rarely the same as the reality was.
Brace yourself! We’re in for a few years of overly sentimental remembrances filled with nostalgia. As the fiftieth anniversary of the events of the late 1960s roll around, there will be plenty of nostalgia. This year saw the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery freedom march. And we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first Peanuts television special. And next year we can celebrate the 50th anniversary of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
I doubt if there is much nostalgia for the 50th anniversary of Taster’s Choice freeze dried coffee, but there will probably be a television special or two focusing on the Beetles last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
There are plenty of nostalgia 50th coming in the next few years. 2019 should be a banner year with the Woodstock anniversary alongside the first moon walk (on the actual moon by Neil Armstrong, not the dance by Michael Jackson). It is also the anniversary of the release of Easy Rider, which happens to be the first movie I attended Susan before we were married.
I suspect that we Baby Boomers will drive the Generation Xers and Millennials up the wall with our nostalgia. I can remember being put off by the nostalgia of our parents’ generation. There was a time when popular culture was so romantic about the victories of World War II that you would have thought that every one that age had personally been present for the storming of the beaches at Normandy and then returned to Times Square for a romantic kiss captured by the photographers.
We’ll probably be no different. So, for the record, I wasn’t at Woodstock. I did buy the record album and played it a bit too loud for the comfort of my neighbors in the dormitory I presume. I did have an Easy Rider poster on the wall and for a month or so I called my roommate “Billy,” and he called me “Captain.” There was no particular resemblance to Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda and the biggest motorcycle I ever rode was a borrowed 350 cc Honda driven around town a few times.
I suppose that the events of the 1960s shaped the culture of our time as surely as the events of the 1940s shaped the culture of the years that followed. I just don’t want us to get so nostalgic that we become dishonest about our times.
My generation hasn’t exactly been stellar in our contributions to the future. We have been a bit too self absorbed and selfish to solve the problems that we identified in our youth. The wealth gap between rich and poor is greater than it was when we came into our adulthood. The gender pay gap has not been overcome. Poverty persists and there are more homeless on the streets now than in our youth. We have over consumed fossil fuels and left the climate warmer than it was before our time. We have not made racism a thing of the past nor achieved world peace.
The truth is that even though the 1960s were tumultuous times for our country, they probably were not more so than the times in which we are currently living. Injustice and violence are still threats to civil society that need to be resisted. War continues to ravage and destroy lives around the globe.
I suppose that nostalgia is inevitable and the nostalgia of my generation will seem quite oppressive to those who are younger than us if for no other reason than that there are so many of us. They call us boomers in part because there were so many of us born in those post World War II years.
For the most part, I have no plans to get caught up in all of the reunions and commemorations and nostalgic events of the next few years. I find it more interesting to have a conversation with a member of Generation X or a Millennial. Quite frankly, I’m more interested in talking about the present and the future than I am in telling stories about the past. We shared some hard times and some good times. We made some good choices and a few bad. We had our triumphs and tragedies. We contributed to the stories of our people. But our story only makes sense if it is connected to the stories of those who went before and those who follow us.
As we look back, we have an obligation to tell the truth about the past. We also have an obligation to realize the importance of the events of times other than our own.
As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told the crowds in Washington in 1963, “We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. . . . Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”