Nostalgia

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
1 Corinthians 13:11

It is an understatement to say that I am nostalgic. Sometimes I try very hard to convince my brain that it's still 1986, but this time around I'm old enough to be fully conscious of my surroundings. Truth be told, the 80s "slash" early 90s have come and gone. How lucky though for a die hard nostalgic to have this glorious leviathan of information we affectionately refer to as the internet?. I reserve my god given right to spend hours upon hours of my limited time on Earth to scour youtube to fulfill my insatiable craving for yesteryear.

I've always carried this overwhelming feeling inside of me. The feeling that nothing will ever be as good as it once was. No event could ever compare to the most significant events that have already occurred. Which in turn, shaped me into who I am today. Once you are forced to "grow up" by your superiors and peers, the magic of life begins to fade away in to the infinite void.  

Now I'm starting to sound a bit brooding. I don't want to feel that way. I mean, shit, an educated human should know better than to revel in past pleasures, right? What's that phrase? Whatever happened, happened. It's true. Shit, does in fact, happen. But we always have the choice to remember that shit as good or as bad. Sometimes memories can be very fulfilling and personally gratifying. 

There seems to be this stigma that merges adulthood with childhood. This overwhelming notion that a lot of the mainstream public seem to agree with. When we all turn a specific age, we are almost required to quote unquote grow up. Throw away your comic books and Yoda pez dispenser because now is the time to nut up and work your fucking balls off until Father Time says otherwise. How wicked, right? Not wicked like a skateboarder might say. More like wicked being uttered by a frightened Salem resident. 

                                                                                                 Give up what makes you happy. We all agreed to this. 

When you're 18 you can smoke. 

When you're 21 you can drink. 

When you're 25, you can rent a car.  

And when you're about 13/14 you're expected to at least begin the stages of "growing up". (Is it even possible to grow down?) Time to think of college. A career. Your future. The inevitable lineage you're expected to continue in the name of your father and his father before him.

This whole process we all inevitably go through always makes me sad. To think out of an average 65 year life span on Earth, you're expected to enjoy 18 years of it, and then force yourself to do things you know in your heart of hearts, that you sincerely do not want to do. And then the last 10-15 years of your life is spent in a fog of confusion and pain.

Let me set the record straight at this juncture and say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with liking things that really have no influence on anyone but yourself. So you happen to like musicals and getting dressed up like a beaver just for fun. All the luck in the world to you. You're doing something that makes you happy, and no one, no matter how maniacal they might be, can take that away from you. And if anyone ever tries, we truly owe it to ourselves to run the fuck away from that negative jibber jabber.

I can't help but quote Ashley Montague's excerpt from 'The Sync Book 2'...

"...the truth about the human species is that in body, spirit, feeling and conduct we are designed to grow and develop in ways that emphasize rather than minimize childlike traits; we were never intended to grow 'up'."

Make believe is fun. Everyone can agree on some level. One of the main reasons I respond so strongly to film is its escape aspects. Movies are essentially gateways to escape the mundane reality we all love and tolerate, in to a fantastical world where literally ANYTHING is possible. 

What's not appealing about that?

I realize now, while typing these letters, that I always seem to forget a very icrucial fact about the good old days...

At one point, the past was the present. So that right there is definitive proof that grand times, littered with grand feelings are only a mental mouse click away.

-Dom