Nostalgianauts: Raiders of a Lost Past
I guess the genesis of this blog has been a series of events that have caused me to reflect frequently over the last few months.
I am currently living in a time of life where many of the heroes I grew up listening to, or watching on screens both big and small, alongside writers who shaped my thinking, have slowly been dying off. It has been a reminder of my own increasing age. Something I forget all too often, only to be reminded by my body through a series of aches and pains, as a recent visit to a roller-skating rink made clear.
Looking back seems to be the cool thing to do. Retro is chic. Boy bands reforming are once again popular. It seems that the past is the new future.
I am a big believer that the past can be a great place to visit and learn from. However, it is rarely a good place to live. Look back, do not stare, I was once told, and it is something I have tried to do. To look at my past, but not spend too much time there.
Recently, the 1980s have become very prominent in our house. As a fan of the television series Stranger Things, a show set in the 1980s that pays homage to many of the films I grew up watching, it has brought about a resurgence of music I listened to growing up.
These recent events I have alluded to have been varied, yet strangely connected to me.
As a father, I am forever trying to introduce, perhaps indoctrinate, my daughter to some of the finer things in life. Star Wars is one of her favourite films. I was recently watching a Christmas present, Press Gang on DVD, something I watched on television over 25 years ago. It instantly transported me back to my younger days and reminded me how the themes were hard-hitting and made me think differently.
I often find myself drawn to television shows and films from my own timeline, and the pull towards them is quite strong. It has become a joke between myself and my wonderful wife, who patiently allows me to wander down these passages of my past.
Another time, whilst visiting my best friend of forty years, we were talking about childhood memories, as we often do. It is the time when we sink into deep nostalgia and wade around in the mire of our lives.
The following day, whilst reminiscing with my daughter as I showed her my hometown, I came face to face with a former sex worker whom I knew when I was homeless. Here was someone tied to an old chapter of my life, while I now stood so far removed from that story. Recently, I was told that she had died. It affected me more than I expected. These frayed and fragile ties to our pasts can become brittle and disappear like wisps of smoke.
The past is a strange place. It is somewhere we have all been, and yet it is experienced in such an individual way.
A year ago, during a bout of nostalgia, I looked up my niece on Facebook and found her. Having not seen her for over 30 years, that little girl is now a grown woman with children of her own. I had hoped to find out about my older brother, whom I had not seen for almost 25 years.
Then recently, my niece messaged me a picture asking if the face looked familiar.
As I stared at the face of my brother, clearly older and not how I remembered him, it caused an overwhelming surge of memories, both good and bad. Another connection that had become frayed and forgotten led me to realise that throughout our lives we are often reminded of moments and forgotten rooms from the crowded attic of memory.
Again, I find myself drawn to the past. Retro is new now.
The 1980s were my decade, filled with fractured memories of sadness, joy and childlike adventure. For me, films, television and music take me back to my past quicker than a DeLorean.
A recent Father’s Day gift, a portable turntable, reintroduced me to vinyl. This has led me down roads through charity shops and car boot sales, searching for the sounds of my past. Whilst a Vangelis album here, or a Genesis album there, have brought me much joy and a connection to a teenage version of myself I have not experienced in years, it has also encouraged me to explore and discover new music.
I now find myself trawling through charity shops and car boot sales, seeking albums I once owned. Hearing them again brings back feelings of both joy and sadness.
Clients come to my room with their pasts wrapped around them like a cloak, or sometimes a shroud.
For some people, the past is a war zone, with casualties and brutality scattered across it. They sit down carrying the historical trauma of having lived through it. Sometimes uncovering their past is like walking through a minefield that has never been cleared, with fear of stepping on one of those buried devices and triggering an explosion that cascades into the here and now, as forgotten experiences or bottled emotions burst forth.
It has been important for me to look at my own past. To explore its nooks and crannies, particularly how it shaped and developed my attachment style. It has helped me recognise the strengths I gained and developed. It has also offered an opportunity to put to bed some of the more painful experiences attached to regret, guilt and shame.
In our pasts lie many of the answers to who we are and how we became who we are. There are those of us who can become so stuck in life that sometimes we need to go back and explore those shadowy paths in order to understand, heal and move forward.
Clients sometimes present with childhood issues relating to experiences they have endured, losses they have carried, fragmented relationships, or belief systems that have become so embedded they no longer know where they begin and where those beliefs end.
The opportunity to take time and sensitively sift through these memories and experiences can help a client move forward, become unstuck, lay some of these damaging experiences to rest, reshape their story and free themselves from the trappings of old wounds.
Equally, trips into nostalgia can provide a diversion from the troubling here and now. They can become an escape from the harsh realities of today in favour of the halcyon days of yesterday.
Look back, do not stare.
In AA literature they talk about not regretting the past, nor shutting the door on it.
The past we have is our map. It is the satnav history of the journey to now. Only by exploring that past can we begin to think about where we need to go next.
My brother messaged me.
And suddenly a connection was formed. A daughter finds her father. A brother speaks to a brother. Past and present are brought together and will continue to shape future lives.
I like the term Nostalgianaut, coined by my best friend of forty years. It captures the idea that we can become archaeologists of our own lives in order to better understand who we are, and who we now wish to be.
Sincerely yours, Paul
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