Like many of you, I can be a nostalgic person. Not the type of nostalgia where I think, "The good ole days were better," because they weren't for the most part. But I like to visit places and people from my past. Yesterday, I had the unique experience of giving a teacher in-service at the high school where I spent the first ten years of my career.
Coined by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in 1688, 'nostalgia' referred to a medical condition – homesickness – characterized by an incapacitating longing for one's past. Hofer favored the term because it combined two essential features of the illness: the desire to return home (nostos) and the pain (algos) of being unable to do so.
Nostalgia's symptomatology was imprecise and was initially thought to primarily affect soldiers and sailors from specific countries. However, once nostalgia was identified among soldiers from various nationalities, the idea that it was geographically distinct was abandoned, and a new understanding was born.
Except, for me, it was geographically specific.
I arrived almost an hour and a half before the in-service. I wanted plenty of time to explore and experience the place I had called home for more than a decade. With school already out for the summer, almost no one was on campus, and I was free to explore in silence for more than an hour. It was glorious! With every turn of a corner and open door, my mind flooded with memories. The things I had experienced, the students I taught, and the lessons I learned. After being gone for more than two decades, the feelings were overwhelming.
It was nostalgia at its best.
That's the way nostalgia works. Remember the good, forget the bad.
But I know that nostalgia and that those memories aren't accurate. The feelings? Yes. The memories? No. I remembered only the good and none of the bad. The warmth was genuine, but the memories were biased.
In a paper published in the Association for Consumer Research, author Alan Hirsh states, "Nostalgia is not a specific memory, but an emotional state we attach to a certain time. Many people idealize the past due to perceived pleasant feelings associated with it."
The machination of filtering out the bad and remembering the good takes time. Time to blur the lines between what really happened and how we feel about what happened. Time to blur our true memories into an altered state between reality and fantasy.
When will that happen with the Pandemic? I mean, we learned to romanticize other tragedies.
I don't feel the way about the past two years that I do about my decade-long stay at that school, and I surely don't get the same warm fuzzies walking into my living room where I spent the past twenty-six months as when I entered the classroom where I spent the better part of the 1990s.
According to research on nostalgia, I will eventually forget the pain of the Pandemic. I will forget the financial and personal loss. I will forget watching teachers struggle and students fall away. I will forget what it was like to wear a mask or be socially distant. I won't remember the bell covers and instrument bags. And, I will forget what an aerosol study is.
But I won't forget it all. That's not how nostalgia works.
I will remember the people I met and the experiences I had with great fondness. The obstacles I faced and the things I achieved. The memories I made, the trips I didn't take, and my time at home.
These past two years have been filled with so much good. So much achievement and accomplishment. So many innovations and adaptations. So many obstacles were overcome, and so many students were impacted. SO MUCH GOOD HAPPENED.
When will we remember and feel good about that?
I am ready to remember the good and forget the bad. I am ready for my altered state, and I am ready to be awash in the positive thoughts of everything we achieved during this tragic time. I guess, I am feeling nostalgic for nostalgia.
Please have a GREAT summer, my friends.
Scott
p.s. I will be giving you a break from Memorial Day to late July, as is traditional for me! A break from ME! This will be the last free e-zine until then. I will be hosting some events for Patrons. Feel free to join us by becoming a Patron.