To the deep thinkers,
Welcome to the Deep Thinkers Newsletter: A collection of essays dedicated to going beyond the surface.
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I recently met up with an old friend to grab a drink. We hadn't spoken in almost a year, so the reunion was long overdue. Though we don't see each other often, we always slip back into familiarity with little to no effort. And to me, those are the best kind of friendships.
As we reflected on all that had changed since we'd last spoken, the concept of nostalgia came up. Specifically, the "good old days" and how we tend to look back at the past through rose-tinted lenses.
My friend said he felt that everyone he knows lives exclusively in the past—claiming everything was better "back then."
Always looking back.
Always comparing.
Never content.
I told him I've noticed the same thing in my own life. Many people I know rarely have anything good to say about their current situation. Instead, they lament the time that has passed—as if their lives were already over. As if who they are today is all they'll ever be. As if there's nothing left to accomplish.
It often feels like I’m surrounded by walking corpses who are stuck in a trance.
Nostalgia (fragmented recollection)
Nostalgia is defined as the burning desire to return to a romanticized version of the past.
It can be triggered by sights, sounds, smells, and places, and it usually hits harder during major life transitions—going through a breakup, moving away to college, relocating to a new city, getting married, or having your first child.
It's during these times when our brains are reminding us of who we once were, what we used to want, and what we could've been.
The effects of nostalgia hit like a psychological drug. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to resist—why we return, time and time again, to the sweet embrace of nostalgic comfort.
When we’re on nostalgia our past becomes a portrait of distorted images—romanticized stills that don’t tell the entire story. And when the effects wear off, the depression that can follow feels like an inception-level kick.
We can’t trust our minds during these nostalgic trips. Our memory is mostly a collection of fragments, and you can't trust a fragmented recreation of reality.
So many of us stay stuck, looking back—incapable or unwilling to snap back to reality. I know what it’s like to get stuck in a blizzard of emotions after I’ve fallen into the rabbit hole of my own nostalgic time capsule.
But what will it feel like when I reach the end of my life and realize all I ever did was live thinking about yesterday when my life was happening right in front of me?
Nostalgic blindness
The above quote is loosely attributed to Plato and Socrates in the 4th Century BC. Notice that even back then there was panic and anxiety over the youth and their behaviors. You could take that quote—word for word—and attribute it to anyone in any era and it would fit right in.
I’ve been hearing a version of that quote since I was a kid, and you probably have as well. Every new generation is apparently the worst we’ve ever seen. Disrespectful. Lazy. Morally bankrupt.
My friends—those who are parents, teachers, or have simply crossed the Rubicon into the realm of grumpy adults, feel the same way.
Now, it's the TikTok and iPad-everywhere-you-go generation that will doom us all.
As a society, we look back in time and assume that things were better—not just in our lives but in the world. The world was safer “back in the day.” Was it?
Supposedly kids were model citizens and respected their elders in the old days. Were they? Did they?
Older generations try to shame my generation and the ones coming up, assuming we don't work as hard. They make it seem as if they had it all figured out when they were young. But it’s all bullshit.
That train of thought is simply a collective acceptance of a distorted sense of history. Let’s call it nostalgic blindness. That is, filtering your memories so that when you reminisce, all you see is the good stuff.
I don't think nostalgia is a healthy modality. But nostalgia and a sense of history are not the same thing. Nostalgia is a dysfunction of the historical impulse, or a corruption of the historical impulse. — William Gibson
Nostalgic blindness warps our perception, making it harder to appreciate all that is going right in our lives today. Or it leads us to ignore the fact that we still have some of the same problems as a collective.
The youth is rebellious. Global atrocities are happening every day. We are divided over matters of politics and religion. What's new?
Culture is a chief player in our collective nostalgic blindness. If you consume any kind of media, it’s almost inescapable. Everywhere you look you’re bombarded with movies, TV shows, and product designs meant to capture the essence of past eras.
For instance, the show Stranger Things, all those Disney remakes, and the carousal of retro Jordan sneakers that are re-released over and over again—all meant to overtly feed this communal belief that things were better in the past.
Nostalgia is a lucrative business. It's the business model companies deploy to churn out soulless pieces of content, all for the goal of capitalizing on society's thirst for nostalgic bliss. It’s a model that is certainly good at making money, but not one that pushes creativity forward.
Companies follow the money and nostalgia makes money. And if we keep feeding the machine why would these companies change their strategy?
A single piece of nostalgic media can power your own personal time machine. I fire up an episode of one of my favorite childhood cartoons, Static Shock, and suddenly I'm seven years old again, sitting on a flower-printed couch in front of a big-backed TV.
The comfort is unreal.
There is a bliss that takes over, a type of high that whispers to me Everything was so simple back then. Everything was better.
But this is just me looking back through my own rose-tinted glasses. It’s me scratching that itch for the days that are gone. It's me omitting everything that wasn't right about my childhood. The loneliness, the abandonment, the lack of agency.
Of course, my youth had moments of joy. But to sit in a state of always wanting to return does nothing but distract me from the life I am living right now.
By the time I've snapped out of my trance, more of my life has passed me by. I have aged. I have lost contact with friends. I have let momentous experiences race by.
I have failed to live.
Alive but not living
Nostalgic blindness steers us into a suspended state, where we are no longer tethered to the experiences of today. In this state, it becomes difficult to appreciate the people in our lives—those who love us and whom we also love.
You never know who will be gone tomorrow. The things you’re free to do today are probably some of the things you wished you could do when you were younger.
In the same vein, looking too far ahead provides its own pitfalls. There is nothing wrong with having goals and looking ahead to a day when you accomplish them. There is no shame in wanting to improve your life. But you still have to live through the present before you can reach the future you dream of.
How will it feel to accomplish your goals only to realize you miss the simplicity of how things used to be?
You see, life is about trade-offs. Even your massive goals come at a price (i.e., more money and success, but more expectations and possibly less time for simple pleasures).
Instead of expecting the future to save you from your lack of contentment, find your salvation in the here and now.
Slow down and take in the love that’s around you today. One day you’ll wake up and everything will be different and you’ll wish you could return to this very moment.
A pillar of salt
I broke away from the religious dogmas of my youth. Yet, a few biblical stories still stick with me. To me, most of these stories were never meant to be taken literally. They are instead, allegorical fables meant to provide us with wisdom and guidance.
One of the stories I see from a different perspective is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah—the cities that God destroyed using fire and brimstone.
The story goes as follows:
In the book of Genesis, God tells Abraham that he’s going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah due to the rampant wickedness found in both cities (sexual assault, murder, theft, idolatry, and a gross abuse of power). The cities also cared very little for the poor and needy and treated visitors with contempt. Lot (Abraham’s nephew), and his family lived in Sodom and so Abraham begged God to spare his nephew and his family along with all the righteous ones living in Sodom and Gomorrah. God agreed to spare the cities if Abraham could find 10 righteous people.
Spoiler alert: God did not find those 10 righteous people.
And so, two angels came down and attempted to lead Lot and his family out of the Sodom. The angels warned Lot, his wife, and their two daughters not to look back as God rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. Everyone but Lot’s wife heeded the warning. She couldn’t resist looking back at the place she’d once called home. So she turned around, and at that moment, became a pillar of salt.
Now, whether this actually happened or not doesn’t matter. As a child, the story of how God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins was used to scare me and my friends into being good Christians. As an adult, I see it differently.
I see the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as an allegory for moving forward rather than staring back at your past.
If you're always looking back at the life you used to live, rather than continuing to move forward, you'll remain stuck in one place as a pillar of salt or a statue made of stone.
Instead of growing, you'll stagnate.
Rather than seeing the opportunities right in front of you, you'll step right over them.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with reminiscing sometimes. I have mementos of the past (pictures, totems, gifts) all of which transport me back to a moment long gone. The problem lies in the inability to snap back to the present. It’s the obsession with what is behind you that will turn you to stone.
The good old days
Distorted or not, sometimes a hit of nostalgia is all we want.
The pain of the present may feel like too much to handle. And even if we know that the pain is a condition of the future we want so badly, we’ll still try to avoid it. This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It means you’re human.
But to truly live the human experience you must be present, breathing in your life as it’s happening—not fixating on what you’ve left behind.
Appreciation for the past will free you.
The obsession to return will paralyze you.
Rather than measure your present circumstances versus your past ones, measure them for what they are: proof that you are still alive and blessed to be doing so.
Your old job was better than your new one? At least you have a job. Your ex was less stubborn than your current partner? At least you have someone to share your life with right now.
Look around at what you see and write down the things you're grateful for. The very act of recognizing all the things you get to do now can radically shift your mood. Reach out to those friends you've lost touch with. Call them. Make plans to meet and reminisce together. Then make the effort to keep those relationships alive.
If there is a place you miss, visit it if you can. When you do this, you’re satisfying your nostalgic itch by uniting your present self with a memory of your past.
Pick up old hobbies. Grab a skateboard and cruise through your neighborhood. If you used to play competitive sports, join a rec league. Draw. Write stories. Play an instrument. Reconnect with your inner child and play the games you used to love.
You do not abandon your past, you simply build on top of it.
The good old days are not in our past; they are happening right here right now. If you spend your whole life looking back, one day you’ll wake up and it’ll be time to move on from this world. When that time comes, will you leave as an active participant or nostalgic voyeur?
Love what you have now. Love the people in your life today. We are not time travelers. We are not immortal. We can’t go back and relive moments. And one day we, and those we love, won’t be here anymore. The good old days are not behind us but staring us in our face, right here, right now—begging for us to be present.
The boring. The mundane. The tedious. The difficult. It’s all part of the human experience.
And once we’re closer to leaving this plane of existence, that’s when we’ll wish we could do it all over again.
Let’s not wait for our day of departure to appreciate our lives. Instead, let’s be fully present now. And so when we are on our way out, we’ll know we lived fully.
What stood out to me this week:
On being yourself:
I decided who I wanted to be, and that is who I am.
Your past does not define you. Your current circumstances do not define you. Only you define you. Decide on the type of person you want to be, and then be that person.
On transitional characters:
A transitional character is one who, in a single generation, changes the entire course of a lineage. The changes might be for good or ill, but the most noteworthy examples are those individuals who grow up in an abusive, emotionally destructive environment and who somehow find a way to metabolize the poison and refuse to pass it on to their children. They break the mold. They refute the observation that abused children become abusive parents, that the children of alcoholics become alcoholic adults, that “the sins of the fathers are visited upon the heads of the children to the third and fourth generation.” Their contribution to humanity is to filter the destructiveness out of their own lineage so that the generations downstream will have a supportive foundation upon which to build productive lives.
– Carlfred Broderick, Marriage and the Family
Many of us come from broken homes. We’ve had to grow up without much guidance or the proper role models. Abused. Neglected. Abandoned. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not uncommon. Still, we always have a choice. A choice to break the downstream of poison. A choice to be the outlier—the one that is a conduit for love and acceptance rather than anger and rejection.
Let’s be the transitional characters of our stories. Let’s be the ones who change the course of our lineage. Because no matter what horrors our past holds, we can shape our future however we see fit.
🎵Song of the week:
Thank you for your time. Let me know how this post resonated with you or share it with a friend.
Stay blessed and enjoy your weekend.