Nostalgia

Each year, as my memory fills with all that another year adds, there is more "past" to think about and so I find myself thinking about it more and more. Sometimes I think I'm becoming like those older folks I've known who've been "stuck in the 60s" or some other decade appropriate for them. I frequently think about the way things were and, increasingly, wish it were that way again. But, I've discovered, there's more to it.

I don't believe that nostalgia is just thinking about the past and wishing it were that way again. It's about feeling that way again. When we go way back, all the way to our childhood, there was an innocence, a naivety, through which we viewed the world. That is what we really miss. The "things" of that time, especially the music, are only reminders of that wonderment. It reminds me of the words of George Bernard Shaw, "It's too bad that youth is wasted on the young."