Present Nostalgia

This morning I burned the scrambled eggs.

And I have been in a testy mood.  I'm not sure if it was all because of the eggs.  I know it wasn't.  But the eggs didn't help.

I have this theory about nostalgia.  I think that the reason we often look back at times in our life with rose-colored glasses is because we know we survived it.

We know everything turned out okay.

I bet that the times we look back on with sentimental longing were actually filled with nearly as much anxiety and stress as today.  But we forget that when we look back because we know how things ended up.  Everything ultimately turned out okay.

In the moment, I’m often thinking: Will there be enough money?  Will we ever get good sleep again without our baby waking us up throughout the night?  Will we ever find good friends in our new city?

But when I look back on those times, I think:  Those were the good old days...

I hate that I so often look back on my life with such good feelings but don't feel the same way about the present moment.  I'm trying to learn to live with a sense of present nostalgia - like I'm living this day with the awareness that everything turned out okay and I've come back to live it again.

On particularly rough days, Ash and I will say to each other: "How much money would future us pay to come back and enjoy this day?"

I burned the eggs.  My kids are screaming for breakfast.  Ash is cleaning up chicken poop on the patio.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that my 70 year old self would pay a hefty sum of money to time travel back and enjoy this day again.

Evolution, it seems, doesn't optimize for joy.  It prioritizes survival and has given us bodies/brains that are great at constantly scanning for threats to our survival and comfort.

So we often drive through life looking out for potholes and forgetting that we're on a miraculous ride.

We have to intentionally cultivate an awareness of the miracle that is our life.

Sure, I burned the eggs.  But those burned eggs took an infinitely unfolding universe 14 billion years to create.  And I got to be a part of that.  What a miracle.  A crusty, inedible miracle.

It's so easy to forget that this is all a miraculous gift.  One day we just woke up in these bodies.  We didn't ask to be here.  We just showed up.  And then immediately had to figure out how to survive, how to fit in, how this all works.  And it can be hard to turn that mode off - and remember that this is all a crazy gift we get to enjoy.

This is why those who have had so much heartbreak can often be the most joyful people.  The ones who had their health taken from them, lost their loved ones or a bunch of money.  Because then they came face to face with their worst fears, but also a deeper truth:  That this is all a miracle.  So we might as well soak it up and live it the best we can.

They remind us that joy doesn't come from everything going right.  Sometimes we need things to go very wrong to remind us that we've been playing the wrong game.

I'm not sure if it's possible to live every moment with a beautiful awareness of the miracle that is our life.  But maybe we can live more of it with a present nostalgia.  Maybe we can balance the anxiety, stress and striving with an awareness that it's amazing we even have eggs to burn.

As the Benedictine nun Julian of Norwich heard during her near death experience when sick, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Or in the words of Andy Bernard, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”