Nostalgia and the Infinite Present

As I start this New Year, I also look back and honor the past. I’m also pondering how I think about the past.

It’s this balance of heart, mind and body: how I feel it, think about it, and experience it. It’s hard to separate these things, as they really all just become entangled as one “whole” experience, but I’m sure going to try…

To the left: A recently discovered work. It's literally one of the first commercial illustrations I ever did for a design rough. The final design was never approved, but this work brings back so many memories... it now sits framed in my office to symbolize the promise of the future, and the freshness of the past.

Loss, fondness and fascination

From a high-level, and without getting into specifics, I have often associated a feeling of loss with the past. Many of us may very well do that. There’s this sense that we can “never go back,” and that what we once had is lost forever. We feel a familiar lump in the stomach as we try to grasp at what was, and bring it back. A few slightly more specific memories:

• Places I have lived and traveled to over the years that seem so hard to get back to.
• Family, and how living so far away from home has changed my familial relationships.
• Friends that have been so dear to me in the past that seems to have moved into the outer circle now. Previously, I would have never envisioned that was possible.
• Relationships: even the tortured ones leave a mark that we like, or are drawn to think about. Why is that?
• Being the youngster, fresh out of college that was the youngest teacher I ever knew. When I started teaching in colleges, I had many students my dad’s age. It was a bit of an expected turn to become a teacher, and it involved a bit of a time-warp.
• And there are sooo many more… 

I have also looked at it with fondness and fascination, and even something I might have bragging rights for...

As a technology geek, digital artist, and “early adopter” of new invention, I often think about things like:

• Using and learning the very first version of Adobe Photoshop in my undergraduate work in Western New York. The program did not support color yet. 
• Buying LPs, and getting used to a particular “track order” as I bought rock albums. LPs often skipped and popped after frequent use.
• Automotive wonders: Owning a car without anything really “powered” (going to any kind of drive-in required a full-body workout, something I didn’t do as much as a kid). No iPod, no A/C, no CD, but plenty of AC/DC… shall I go on? OK...
• Computer memory was measured in MB (megabytes) and KB (kilobytes), not GB (gigabytes). My early model mac had 8 MB of VERY expensive RAM, that said, I could trick it into artificially thinking it had twice that much, with some cheap software called “RAM Doubler.” Instead of buying more RAM, It was a lot cheaper at the time to go that route (memory was about 10x as much back then).
• Saving all year to buy the aforementioned computer, and any additional RAM I could afford for approximately $3000. It would very quickly become a very expensive doorstop in about a year.
• Many other things I take for granted now: Cell phone? Yes folks the land line was the ONLY line. Internet?

Ok, I’m gonna STOP. All of a sudden, I feel really old…

A Sense of place

So it seems like a lot of this comes back to how I define my identity: where I have been, what I have done, how I have left my mark. It’s comforting to think about things accomplished. Strangely enough, I think even when the thoughts are unpleasant; I often like to think about them too. It's like I'm addicted.

I can’t even begin to tell you the journey of awareness I have embarked upon to really pay attention to my patterns. Those habits are SO hard to break, and sometimes they become so comforting that we would DARE try to break them.

Now that I can buy a song instead of the whole album, I am forced to consider that things are different now. I would like to think they could even be better.

A Sense of Momentum

I never wish to stop thinking about the past, that’s not my point. I think what I have realized I am starting to do, is change how I am thinking about the past. Seems I am slowly adopting new patterns.

I think in some ways, past and present are becoming “one.” Let me explain: in all my awareness of patterns, and how I am changing, a new design has been emerging: the ability to look at the past as part of the present. What I have done has set me up to be right here, right now: I am in crystal clear focus.

A Sense of Focus

I find myself accepting who I am in a new way as I focus in on this moment, the moment that all of my past action has lead to: the fruits of that action. A new “working” identity is formed. I say that, because if I label it too closely as permanent and unchanging, I risk falling into older patterns, and then fall under the surface of the big pond again.

I think I have to remember that I’m measured in Gigabytes now, not Kilobytes: I’m a new man!

;)

It’s really scary to consider what’s possible. It might mean you have to change, or accept that you don’t know what next week looks like (just ask me about being a consultant sometime).

The unknown is terrifying. It’s not something easily adopted, understood or embraced. The lump in my belly from experiencing the loss of the past still happens sometimes, but I think it has slowly become one that is more about acceptance, celebrating triumphs, and the creation of momentum for the future. If everything has led us to where we are now, I think it puts a little more pressure on us to fully embrace the responsibility of “the now,” and out sense of the new.

Creating Momentum

So my final thoughts here, are regarding the "product-of-my-process." Ultimately, all this thinking, feeling and experiencing is creating momentum. The product of your actions, thoughts and feelings is:

1.     Is often hard to recognize

2.     Can involve time delays

3.     Involves as much objectivity as you can muster

Being able to look back at how you have changed, evaluate it, learn from it, and use it to create momentum for continuing, is a hard skill to learn.

I’m still working on it.

The “present,” or the gift of nostalgia, is how nostalgia has led me to the infinite—never-ending—importance of the moment. It’s all we’ve got, and the moment is what ultimately changes us, regardless of how we think, feel or experience the past. It’s the gist that keeps on giving, like it or now. Our experience of the world wraps around all these things and makes us whole, and part of a much bigger whole.

I end up feeling a little displaced from the "linearity" of my perception of time—the then and now.  Relationships seem to occur across these limiting boundaries, and I want to time in a a much more expansive way. I think I'll work on that too. Perhaps this is a good time to read some more Robert Grudin (try his book "Time and the Art of Living.")

And as the consulting business seems to prove, time and time again: change really IS the only thing we can count on. Who’s up for it?

Much love in 2011 to friends, family and acquaintances—everyone—I have met, learned from, shared moments with, and tipped a glass with over the years…

Happy New Year!!!