Whenever I am bored, or whenever the clock ticks to an early morning hour and a sad, lonely wave of emotion washes over me, I always catch myself thinking of the past. The days where I wasn’t focused on perfecting my quickly coming future or stressing about an upcoming due date is something that I will always long for. I search for photos where I’m pictured having a carefree expression, unknowing of the stress that lies ahead. But how could I know? I was young and happy, living my life to the fullest at the ripe age of 6 years old.
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I scroll every night through the images of me running through my sprinkler while the dry grass sticks to my wet legs, waking my mom up at six in the morning to dance to Nicki Minaj in the basement, getting my back rubbed while laying on my grandpa’s lap as I make him watch Beauty and the Beast with me, and feeling like my absolute most gorgeous self while playing dress up. This comfort from the past is a feeling I long for every time I get stressed about the present.
A part of getting older is never being able to experience what it feels like to be young again. The process of aging screws us over. Christmas starts to loose all of its magic, school isn’t filled with playing house, making snowmen out of play-doe, or playing with shaving cream, and overall, life just seems harder. The stresses of growing up quickly pile onto us as we enter our teenage years
and only increases as we become adults. Its hard to remember how we transitioned from kids to teenagers, but with a quick blink of an eye, suddenly I am about to become an adult. To cope with all the anxiety, stress, and sadness, I turn to the past to comfort me about the hardships of the present.
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A turning point in my relationship with nostalgia is when I came to a conclusion earlier this year. It’s easy to remember the nostalgic parts of your life when you’re not currently living it. We overlook the good parts because we have the mindset that they’re the bad parts. But as the days and months go on, we look back to that time and long for it when in the present of that moment we were longing for another.
As I graduate from high school, have a graduation party, choose and go to a college, and say goodbye to my friends, I realize that I am currently living in a nostalgic part of my life. I realize now that I have taken all the tips to “live in the moment” for granted. Instead of appreciating everything happening around me, I have been doing quite the opposite. Instead of focusing on the people and important events around me, I waste my school days waiting for the weekend and countdown the days until graduation.
With the stresses of applying to college, needing to get scholarships done, and continuing to keep up on homework, it’s easy to close your eyes and wish you were back living the simple life you once knew. Being able to live in the moment is hard to do, especially when these moments seem so stressful. So the question is, how does someone painlessly live within the moment?
According to my intelligent friends, and to this article, a way to live in the moment is to ignore all distractions and be aware of the things happening around you. Typically we see nostalgia as a positive, but in the case of trying to live in the moment, its a negative. Although it is more than ok to remember the good moments from the past, forever dwelling in them isn’t.
