Perhaps we shouldn’t begrudge the Disney Adults too much. Maudlin as they may be, nostalgia helps us tolerate the present in order to warm ourselves up to what’s next. It’s how we cope with what John Koenig called “avenoir,” the impossible desire to see memories in advance. “We take it for granted that life moves forward. But you move as a rower moves, facing backwards: you can see where you’ve been, but not where you’re going,” Koenig wrote in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. “Your boat is steered by a younger version of you. It’s hard not to wonder what life would be like facing the other
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