Nostalgia – does the portal to past shape our future?

If I name a feeling that is closest to my heart, it would be nostalgia for sure. It’s because nostalgia is that magical time machine that helps me travel back in time and meet the childhood version of me who teaches me the greatest skill of life which is to be happy unconditionally. My childhood to me seems too perfect of a time to believe in. Life was full of magic and mysteries, where there was always something new to explore, something new to try. Even after childhood, my teenage years were equally energetic and charismatic. There were ups and downs but the downs were equally enjoyable as they helped in understanding the joy of ups.

This feeling, I am so damn sure, is not something that only I feel. Everyone, I believe – okay, not everyone, but most of us – equally love to be mesmerized by the charm of these sweet old memories. However, this is where I break the spell.

I am standing on a patch of an evergreen garden and am covered by a semi-spherical dome made of mirrored glass. This patch of garden is small, but its splendid beauty is reflected back an infinite time in the mirrored wall such that wherever you look, it’s the same limited beauty but over an infinite distance. I pick up a stone and throw it hard at my own reflection in the wall. The glass dome smashes into pieces and I, injured with the loss of my old memories take my first gaze at the magnificent panorama.

Life is not just a garden of flowers; it is something bigger than that. There are hilly terrains where some hikers are running in rain with their muddy shoes who are enjoying their adventure and there are also the cacti in the desert who are proud of their unmatched resilience in the scorching heat of desert. From the dazzling white snow at the peaks to the little seahorses living in the ocean, life is full of elements that have a story of their own from which we can learn valuable lessons. Is this new unseen horizon any less wonderful than the little patch of garden? Certainly not!

Nostalgia is a wonderful portal to the past, but that past was also once a present and the present is already here, so what’s the difference then? The present can also be just as magical and charismatic as is the past. What we try to seek from the past through nostalgia can also be sought in the present. We only have to change the lens through which we see our present.

Sometimes, I want to revisit some old places to which I have some memories attached but I am held aback by myself. I think life is like a doughnut-shaped running track (like the ones in olympic).

Some people are near the center and thus have smaller distance to cover, while those farther have more distance to cover, and then everyone has a different measure of time on their internal clock, so they seem to be moving at same speed despite different distances. Enough of this space-time relativity, here’s what I have learnt: The place where you start is the same place where you end, but you are not the same after that one complete round. The circle is certainly going to be completed somehow, somewhere in the space-time, but you must not make a shortcut like this:

Because that middle place is where lies the quicksand of delusion, where you’re neither in the present nor in the past, you’re stuck somewhere in between.

It would be wrong to say that I have stopped experiencing nostalgia or that it is something that one should avoid. Instead, one should use nostalgia to reignite the present instead of escaping from it. It will help you find the magic and the adventure in the present. The old places will remain where they are and you will return there when it is the appropriate time. The circle is going to be complete. Till then, enjoy the run!