Nostalgia is for losers

Evening, my loves. I come to you after a lovely weekend spent in beautiful Boston with the fam. My mom and I flew and Amtraked in, respectively, to stay with Ben through an especially dreadful weekend of New England weather.

You’ve heard me go on and on about Boston. I aspired to study there as a high schooler which translated into an idyllic college experience. The Boston of my postgrad adulthood has been different, something I envied from my New Hampshire home that now feels like a teenier version of where I live now. During the past few years, I would come for concerts and celebrations without much of the mundane I reveled in as a student.

This would be my first long weekend in the cradle of liberty since I lived in New Hampshire, and I stayed in Ben’s dorm-partment. I took the Acela (best train everrr (in the U.S.)) extra early on Friday to nab some time with my friend Hannah before spending the rest of the weekend with my fam. I spent a chunk of Friday alone, wandering through Back Bay attractions and haunts before taking the extremely slow train to Ben’s work.

I think I’ve figured out how to mitigate annoying transplants in New York, and it involves a treaty between NYC and Boston. All transplants that meet a certain threshold on a to-be-created Annoying Index must live in Boston before they are allowed to move to New York. This way, people are weeded out. Both cities get people who really should be there and love it. Although hate for Boston is warranted, I find it hard to accept from people who haven’t lived there, especially people who have lived in New York.

Of course a New Yorker will dislike Boston because it seems like a crappier, smaller version of their city. I know I would probably be like this, too, but I’m happy that I’ll always love Boston, and I have nostalgia to partly thank for that.

I am not a very nostalgic person. I grew up surrounded by nostalgia, as many white, American suburbs are fueled by nostalgia’s quicksand. People’s parents would talk about the same things forever on a loop, and I detested it. There’s really nothing new going on in your life? You really prefer the past this much? Obviously people of any race can be nostalgic, but I find whiteness and nostalgia to be interlinked. Even the Nazis used pastoral German anecdotes to encourage their people to restore what was once theirs.

For a lot of nostalgic people, their condition stems as defense against their trauma. I am endlessly fascinated by Disney adults, and many of them are so Mouse-obsessed possibly due to childhood trauma or neglect. It’s easy to belong and get joy from a make-believe world or a time in your life that’s so far gone that you’ve fabricated it.

Nostalgia can drag us down and prevent us from moving into the present. A few of my friends have had recent run-ins with ex-partners with varying degrees of success, if you can call it that. Do we gain insight when we reunite with people that were once close to us, or do we revert back to the regressive patterns that ended these relationships in the first place? My friends know I am a staunch no-contact ex, which comes from being the opposite of that in one of my first relationships and only causing harm. That contact can feel euphoric and tragic all at once, because you’re trying to recreate something that ultimately no longer exists.

My subject line was meant to be provocative, and although all losers are nostalgic, not everyone who experiences nostalgia is a loser. I just hate watching people squander their potential by living in the past. I’m not talking about people grieving or incarcerated, who have no choice but to use cherished memories to get out of bed. I’m targeting the dudes that will spend every first date for eternity talking about how they would have gone pro if they didn’t tear their ACL.

Intense nostalgia leads to a state of peaking. My hometown is teeming with high school peakers, including some teachers, peers, and those who procreated them. I loathed the idea of peaking in high school and looked down at those from all social stratas who clearly have. Now with adult eyes, I have a lot more sympathy for most of them because 1. Who cares what makes other people happy? 2. Who am I to pass judgement on anyone about anything when I don’t eat milk with my cereal? and 3. A fraction of them were tied into stagnancy due to factors out of their control. At times, it is a privileged, sheltered take to crap on peakers…or it’s deserved.

I made fun of peakers mercilessly until I thought I became one. My time in New Hampshire begged the question Did I peak in college? All signs were pointing to yes. Comparatively, I was carefree, social, and inspired back then. I felt like the world was ahead of me, and I was at the top of my game. Living in New York gives a resounding no to my earlier question, but that doesn’t take the nostalgia away.

Going to Boston while I lived in New Hampshire was complex the way nostalgia likes to present itself. I was both relieved to be back in the sun yet devastated that it wasn’t really mine to shine upon me anymore. I’d go back to the places I loved and complain about their changes, reminiscing upon what once was.

Some of our friendships are anchored by nostalgia, as well. I have a few friends from certain periods of my life that I am always happy to see, but we are stuck in conversation about a time gone by. As someone who remembers petty gossip and loves to keep tabs on people, I like run-ins like these when I have them.

In moving to New York, I regained access to a bunch of people whose relationships with me stalled in some form after moving away from each other (which happens; I pride myself on being a maintenance friend). As much as I love to yap about the people we once knew and were, I learned that the antidote to nostalgia is to build on top of the experiences you had through something totally new. I now have a bunch of richer friendships because we refused to let our activities be dominated by our younger iterations.

Spending this weekend in Boston was restorative. Looking out the window at my old dorm, eating the food I loved that Ben loves now (Coreanos in Allston, for those curious), and lamenting on when the MBTA was slightly more functional were all great ways to tap into old joys and update them with new ones.

I root against nostalgia because it is how I survive, and I plan on being that way until I require it to rise in the morning. There are so many things that age people, and I refuse to be an old loser. While I am still nimble and hot and confident enough, I can’t look too far into the past for too long. This is even in my job. Once I start losing knowledge of the digital world, I lose employability along with my relevance.

Ignoring nostalgia can be a privilege in my case, for I have so much to take in around me that is a much more fun way to spend my time. It can also be a trauma response. Does my hatred for the past keep me stagnant in a different way? We Jews love saying how those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Does my nomadic desire completely rip out my roots? Am I unable to learn from my mistakes?

In becoming more nostalgic, I’ve also gotten better at processing my emotions. I learned from my mom how to be extremely solutions-oriented and self-optimizing. Although those are still large attributes in my identity, the ability to reflect and listen to my body is a strength. With nostalgia, I fear how the strength warps into a weakness. Insecurity begets nostalgia, and constantly optimizing the self may feel like a secure sense of control when it might actually be a fear of being human.

I’ve learned to live with some of my nostalgias, for they can sure be fun to have. I don’t forget the stories and anecdotes with friends I still have or grew apart from. Backseats of cars I won’t return to. Babies I’ve watched grow up. Even the things that frustrated me have beauty to me now. But I have to keep it moving because I can sleep when I’m dead.