Time
On being nostalgic for the present moment
Imagine you stepped into a time machine and ended up in [insert past decade of choice here].
Even if you were transported to the most boring situation imaginable (a grocery store checkout line, a waiting room, an office); you would be intensely interested in everything.
The technology (or lack thereof), the fashion, the mannerisms and body language of the people around you, the way the people speak; it would be one of the most fascinating moments of your life.
“Holy shit, I’m here in a suburban office park in 1989, this is incredible”.
But the people who were alive in that time didn’t find it interesting.
To them, the way things were was just the way they were, just like the way things are seem to us like they’re just the way they are.
It’s an interesting quirk of human psychology. Our default state is to view our current era as the end point of history. Not in an apocalyptic sense. But in the sense that everything that happened before was building up to this, and now this is just the way things are.
It’s the way we think now. It’s the way people thought in 1975. It’s the way they thought in 1882. It’s the way they thought in Ancient Rome and Ancient Sumeria before them. A caveman viewed every single day of his life as just another day. He wasn’t conscious of his caveman-ness. The way he lived was just the way he lived. Nothing special about it.
We all find the past fascinating.
That’s why period pieces are such a common film genre. It’s why we all feel an intense nostalgia for the world we grew up in. “Viewing the past through rose-colored glasses” is a cliche for a reason. We all do it.
Almost everyone would step into a time machine if one materialized in front of them at this very moment.
The longing for a world that’s gone and never coming back is one of the most profoundly bittersweet feelings in existence.
Nostalgia creates a hold of desire within us that can’t ever be satisfied. The world you want to return to is dead and gone, and there’s nothing you can do to bring it back.
But the real tragedy isn’t the fact that we can’t turn back the clock.
It’s the fact that we aren’t viewing today through the same rose-colored glasses that we view the todays of the past.
Because one day, people will feel nostalgic for what we think of as ‘right now’. They will contemplate this moment, this window of time when you’re sitting here reading these words, and feel the exact same longing that you feel when thinking about a past time that the people living through it didn’t give a shit about.
If those future people were given a time machine and ended up in our current year, they would be awestruck by all the things we take for granted.
Our advanced technology would seem quaint and simple. Our fashion sense would seem amusingly retro. They would look at the things that make us angry and emotional through dispassionate eyes, because they come from a time when our concerns can only be found in history books or period pieces.
The grand events of this moment will have the same level of emotional valence to future generations as we feel when reading about the French and Indian War or Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, i.e. none.
So if you want to appreciate the current moment, try to view it through the eyes of people who don’t yet exist.
It takes effort, but if you can successfully trick your brain into viewing the world that way things will never be the same again.
You’ll look at a group of young women sitting and laughing in a cafe and appreciate the simple transient humanity of the moment. One blink of an eye ago, their souls hadn’t even been brought into existence yet. The next, they’ll be old women with failing bodies inching towards death, then another quick blink of an eye later their corpses will have rotted away and the corpses of everyone who remembered them will have rotted away as well. But right now they’re young women laughing in a cafe.
You’ll look at the technology you use on a daily basis and instead of being awestruck by the scifi-like nature of it or being frustrated by how much it sucks, you’ll see it for what it truly is, which is a temporary stepping stone in humanity’s quest for perpetual improvement. Not a god or a demon. Just a baton that humanity has been passing down through the generations from the invention of the wheel to whatever it is people will birth into existence the day our species goes extinct.
This thought experiment is how you learn to start appreciating your life before it slips away from you.
It’s a way to avoid sleepwalking through life and the antidote to becoming bitter and raging against the winds of change.
When you become nostalgic for the present you begin to appreciate every single second that passes.
You sitting and reading these words is a moment that’s always existed and always will exist.
It’s no better or worse than all the moments that currently exist in both the past and the future.
When Einstein said that “time is an illusion”, I think this is what he meant.
Sure there’s a scientific layer to it.
But the emotional human experience is more important.
I think he wanted to ease the suffering associated with being a human raging against time. He wanted us to see time and all the moments that it consists of the way he saw it.
Time and the passing of it can either be a heaven or a hell.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
If you enjoy my writing you can also read my novel Your Life Does Not Exist, available in both paperback and ebook editions on Amazon.com.