This is my 21st blog post. It’s also been exactly a week since I turned 21…
I’ve officially started my 20s. Well, I mean technically, I started them last year, but that doesn’t really count; the ‘1’ makes all the difference. No more considering me still a young adolescent. I’m a fully-fledged adult now.
Recently, I’ve noticed that many people, particularly around my age, have been feeling really nostalgic these days. Maybe it’s because our 20s are slipping away so fast and we miss actually going out and making memories, so we are forced to remind ourselves of the past, and happier times than now. Or maybe it’s because we miss how things used to be, you know, when there were no social distancing measures, and you could go see friends and family. Perhaps we are just so bored in these current circumstances, and Netflix doesn’t seem to be hitting the spot anymore, so what better than to reminisce upon times we were genuinely happy, and maybe didn’t cherish enough.
I’ve definitely found myself doing this a lot lately. I’ve been feeling really nostalgic about music, specifically the music my sister and I grew up listening to. I made a playlist of every song I could remember that we used to listen to growing up on our little pink MP3 players so it’s like a little time capsule, or like a little time machine that takes us back to a holiday, or primary school discos and whatnot. Not gonna lie, it’s probably my favourite thing to listen to right now.
But this got me thinking. Why do we do this? Why do we revert back to how life used to be? And why now, so often? Do we miss those golden moments of the past? Do we miss the feeling within those moments? Do we regret not treasuring those memories enough and are now mourning the fact that they’re gone and will never come back to us?
It’s so strange but I feel as though all of us as a collective, predominantly in my generation on social media, has recently been obsessed with the good ol’ times and honestly? I love it.
It feels good, all of us reminiscing about our childhoods together. Everyone grew up so differently, from so many different backgrounds, and I think it’s nice how we can come together in the concept of the past and reminisce on memories. We have never met each other, and we may never will, but at some point, our memories kind of converge and the past interlinks in some greater aspects of the universe – we aren’t even aware of it, but there is a connection there. A connection through films, media, music, books, tv shows, even in toys or the clothes we used to wear. It all just seems kind of mad to me when I look at it from a wider perspective. We have all experienced the same sort of songs and films but had our own memories that link back to them. We were all present in the memories we made, but each one inherently different.
I think I’m starting to get on to more of an existential and philosophical rant now so maybe I should stop there because I swear I could theorise about the universe and how things are connected forever.
Speaking of old memories though, there are certain things I don’t even remember, or have completely forgotten about. But, then someone posts about it or sends a photo that takes me back in time for a second, and I’m all of a sudden hit by this gush of an old, faded memory. A warm feeling of joy but married to a slight resentment that I let myself forget about it. It’s mostly a good feeling anyway, a little pocket of happiness, or a sort of bliss in these bleak times. A desire to be a kid again, just for a moment.
One day though, we’ll be reminiscing upon these times: Remember when covid had us all stuck inside? Remember when all the shops were shut? Remember when we had to social distance? Remember when schools were closed and uni was all online?
I suppose it’s started to happen a little already. Remember when we would all forget our masks at the start of lockdown? Remember the first few days of lockdown when everyone thought this would all be over in a matter of weeks?
Or maybe we won’t. I suppose we’ll have to just wait and see…
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