Reverse Nostalgia
“Is this what our parents imagined for us when they came here from the Soviet Union?”
I laughed as I sent the text to David, one of my oldest friends. Between pretending to understand Lacan, sending each other Seinfeld clips, and mutually drowning in the foam of online dating, it seems like we come back to this question more than we’d care to admit.
It is, of course, a funny ask. There is no logical way that my parents, a neurotic nurse and a train conductor draped in Lacoste, had any idea where life would take me. I would say the same for David’s parents, who have the same vibe as mine, just a bit more eccentric, and a tad more comedic, albeit unintentionally. (Perhaps the hardest I have laughed in the past ten years comes from a story David recounted, one where he tells his father he is studying, and asks him to ‘be quiet’, to which his father replies, in a thick Ukrainian accent: “David….are you calling me a quiet bee?”)
The question arose from a small discussion we had, in between voice messages of the two of us doing our best Slavoj Zizek impressions. The hardest thing about reading Slavoj’s work is not having his gruff, yet warm cadence to guide you through it, so sometimes, we make our own. We are two smart guys. (This is untrue, we understand nothing he says.)
David has his eye on a few watches, and sent them over to me to get some thoughts. We had both been getting into timepieces as of late, for different reasons. For myself, I enjoyed that they were a symbol of a different era, when precision was measured by masters of their craft; dedicated people who trained for many years in one field, in one place, with no algorithm involved. For my good friend David, I think he just liked how they looked on his wrist. We were both equally enamored.
We shifted, and I formally announced to him that I was going to sink my teeth into wine investing. Dogecoin was a crapshoot, and I read somewhere that this could be fun, because rich people love wine, especially when it’s old and expensive. Where I would start, I had a blurry idea. How much I would put in was equally foggy. What were my long term goals? Also unclear, but hey, I was investing in a real commodity I said, a physical good. Not something imaginary, like say, stocks.
We both had a laugh. Investing in 19th century bottles of Malbec and browsing for vintage Seiko’s was not something I’d envision for us when we met at our high school orientation.
But I liked it. There are a lot of concepts that one can unpack when talking of growing older, and in my circles, it often steers towards the passing of youth. No longer will your days be filled without a care in the world; you will never observe it all through the lens of a childlike wonder.
True or not, these thoughts are stifling at best, and exhausting at worst. The only winning move is not to entertain them, and more importantly, to not fall into their warm embrace, reminiscing of days gone by. You have to employ a strategy that rejects that. You have to take up a sense of reverse-nostalgia.
That is to say, you must begin not a romanticization of the past, but of the future.
This occurred to me on a Sunday, when it seemed like every single thing I had done fit into an extension of reverse-nostalgia; a process of being the person I want to embody as an adult.
I had gone climbing in the morning, and conquered a few problems I previously struggled with. I biked to the farmer’s market and picked up fresh fruit, my favorite thing in the world. I went to the bookstore and I picked up a few magazines, and resisted getting more. I had dim sum with some new friends, and lunch with an old one. I went on a date where I decided to be vulnerable. (With some rumblings of a second in the works.) There was a profoundly stupid meme I laughed at for nearly an hour.
I still employ the everyday, tragic nostalgia often, especially towards time periods of before I was even around- namely the 80s and 90s, when it seemed like we had it all figured out. What is clear through the tinted glasses of reverse-nostalgia is that we very much did not.
David and I set up a time for us and some of our friends to discuss articles, a weekly exchange of our favorite things we’ve read online that week. Miraculously, we have coordinated a version of this on and off for the past couple of years, even as we scatter ourselves across the world.
There are always a lot of laughs; the exchange is equal parts Socratic seminar and what I imagine the Ezra Klein show would be if it went off the rails. We have a rigorous system in place, and playful jabs are taken at each other when someone forgets. After our exchange, my therapist e-mails me to confirm our upcoming session. Her last line includes “I am looking forward to seeing you.”
I think she means it.
I have a feeling I like who I am growing into.