Earlier this week I went to get a haircut. On the way there I had my music collection on shuffle and Don Henley’s classic “The Boys of Summer” came on. I have not listened to it in a while, so I decided not to hit next. After all, I do like the song. Before the song finished, I arrived at the barber shop, so I did not get to hear the entire song. Fate however would intervene. As I went to sit down in the chair, the radio station on at the barber shop started playing, (yes you guessed it), “The Boys of Summer.” At this point, I felt it was a bit serendipitous that I was supposed to hear this song. I was also thinking about what to write about for my next blog entry, and this gave me the topic. The topic is based off two lines in the song that always stood out to me. The first one is, “Don’t look back. You can never look back.” The other one is, “Those days are gone forever. I should just let them go.”
In the context of the song, Don Henley is remembering a past lover he had over a Summer that has seemingly moved away and moved on. In this case, even though he wants to get her back, it may not be the worst idea to move on himself, (even though he says in the song he is going to get her back). For life in general though, I find myself asking can you look back, and should you let the days that are gone forever just go? For this, I feel the answer is not as straightforward.
I enjoy nostalgia. This should be evident in my musical choice of Don Henley. However, many others enjoy nostalgia as well. If you do not believe me, look at all the “classic” music, tv shows, and video games that are making millions at this moment in time. Even many of the things that are popular and based now in the present are based on nostalgia such as the Cobra Kai Netflix series. My 10-year-old son has even chosen to start growing mullet, (I am still trying to decide if that is a good thing or not). Nostalgia is everywhere and it is not going away. Adding to my question about looking back, an additional question I have is why do we love nostalgia so much when we are often advised not to look back and let the past go?
We often tend to remember our past in a more positive light once time passes. When we go through trials and struggles in our lives, we rarely enjoy them in the moment. In 2002, my first year in San Diego, I struggled. Before moving out there I had a job offered to me, but two days before I was set to move from the Louisville (Southern Indiana) area to San Diego, I received a call saying there was no longer funding for my position. Hence, I would not have a job once I got out there. At that point, I had already shipped my belongings, and had a year’s lease on my place. Therefore, I had a choice to either get my stuff shipped back to me, lose my money, and stay where it was safe, less expensive, and where I had grown up and had connections, or I could take my chances and go anyway to a city that is one of the most expensive in the world where I knew no one. I chose to go to San Diego anyway. Looking back, it was the best decision of my life, but the first year there was certainly a struggle.
The reason I chose to move to San Diego was because I wanted to eventually pursue my master’s degree in Geography at San Diego State. The program is a well-respected program, and as a perk at the time, the Cal State University system did not charge tuition for in-state students. They only charged fees. My plan was to live in-state for one year, and then enroll in the program so I could get the in-state status. I eventually got this, but I did not start school until 2004. While 2003 was the watermark for my in-state status, I was struggling so much financially that I could not afford to go to school.
After my initial job offer fell through when moving to the city, I was able to find work with a temp agency a month after I arrived. I was a fresh college graduate, but I had no experience in my field. While doing my undergraduate work, I previously worked in a factory because it paid more than I would have been paid taking an internship in my field. Plus, the company I worked for also paid for my education. Since I was already a non-traditional student at this point living on my own, I needed to bring home as much money as I could to pay the bills. The work at the factory of course did not relate at all to the work I wished to do for my career. However, I did get some experience working with numbers while working there, and it led me to be qualified for basic accounting positions. While the position offered to me originally that fell through was in my field, the positions I got calls back on in San Diego were accounting related. Again, after a month, I found a position through a temp agency. This position had offered a less than the ideal number of hours, pay rate, and working situation. However, it was money coming in. It was not enough to survive long term. I made less than I did working at the factory in Southern Indiana, but it provided some income. However, I ended up maxing out my credit cards, late on my bills, and had no money whatsoever for a social life in city where I knew no one.
My living situation was difficult as well. Being that San Diego was so much more expensive than Louisville, my monthly cost for my lease was more than double what it was in Louisville, and I was making less money. The place I lived in was not the best either. It was a former hotel that was converted to apartments. It was near El Cajon Blvd, which at the time was known as a popular place for drugs and hookers. Both were certainly around and visible. While I had some good neighbors, there were some who were not the best as well. I had a break in attempt at my place once. Thankfully, I was home to stop it while they were trying to remove my screen on my window. The person got away so fast that the only person it could have been was my next-door neighbor. Also, while there, I had another neighbor decide to flush rags down their toilet. This led to the plumbing becoming backed up. The place it backed up into was my apartment’s bathtub. Since this was a former hotel all the pipes were connected. I literally had sewage backup shooting out of my bathtub’s drain. The worst of it was one day I came home from work and it had filled the tub completely with sewage and had overflowed onto my bathroom floor. The sad thing is it was a blessing because the apartment complex discounted my rent for the month because of this. I could not have paid my rent for the month if that did not happen. Literally, a fountain of feces in my bathtub helped save me financially.
Looking back, there was nothing fun about this time in my life in that moment. However, I look back at this time period fondly and positively. There are times I even miss those days. Why is that? Why would I ever look back fondly to this situation? Why would I reminisce about this old apartment and my struggles? I feel there are multiple reasons for this, and I feel all of these can be healthy if channeled correctly, yet they can also be damning if not.
In “The Boys of Summer” song, Don Henley says he does not understand what happened to the love between him and the former lover he is singing about. This may very well be the truth. We tend to look back at events in our life, (even when they were negative), in a positive light after time passes. People often long for a past lover that was bad or even abusive to them. Others return to vices such as drugs or gambling that they worked extremely hard to overcome. Some even retry to play out bad events from their childhood. Why in the world would anyone want to return to this? I feel part of this is because the negative parts of these events are often glossed over due to the fact we have made it through them. This leaves the positive thoughts with a greater emphasis. With the past lover, we remember the vacation to Europe more strongly than we remember the day to day bickering and shaming. With gambling, we remember the time we hit the jackpot, but not the many other nights that the house came out ahead with us. From our youth, we remember the fun events where we did something stupid, yet we do not always remember the consequences of these stupid actions. I feel the reason for this is our minds are actually built to do this. We are meant to forget the negative and remember the positive.
Physically, when our body is cut, a wound heals through time. What is left is a scar. Some scars are small, and in time, we hardly notice they are there. These are most scars. Some heal so well we never notice them. These are scars from things such as paper cuts, getting blood drawn, or a small scrape from falling of a bicycle in our youth. There are some though that never fully heal. They change us. These would be scars from possibly being stabbed in a bar, having reconstructive surgery, or an organ transplant. The first group we tend to forget about through time, but the second group we never forget. Yet, both are examples of physical damage that was done to our body. I feel our minds work similarly. We are not built to continually dwell on negative things. If we did this, then we would stay in a continual depressed state, and we would not be motivated to strive for better days. This does not mean we forget the scars, or they do not change us. The small things, as previously mentioned, we often tend to forget and gloss over in time. Therefore, all that is left are the positive and good memories. With the big things, we never forget, but we learn to look at them in a different light. While heavy trauma to the body or mind may change us forever, there is usually a time when peace comes, and we learn to move on from it preoccupying us. There may be limitations, but we learn to work with them. We are changed.
Bringing this back full circle, why do we love nostalgia? I feel it brings the remnants of our positive memories back to life since we blocked out some of the negative ones. Using my experience about my first year in San Diego what can I take positive out of that? The positive is I was in a bad situation and I came through it. Until reflecting, I do not remember the times I felt lonely in that first year there although there were plenty. I do not remember eating food I did not like because it was what I could afford. Even with the big things then, such as the feces fountain, I have found a way to spin it into something positive. Do I want to relive all of this? Of course not, but do I wish the remember the determination I had back then to better myself? Absolutely. This is what I feel gives me the nostalgic feeling about that time. It is positive.
With this, when is nostalgia negative? When is it bad to look back? It is when we do not remember the negative behind it, or we are blind to why things needed to change in the first place. Things needed to change back then for me because I was not happy with my life. Things needed to change because my living situation was difficult. They needed to change because life this way was mentally unsustainable. These are the days I needed to leave forever, and I had to let them go because they would have destroyed me if I did not. This is just like if someone went back to the abusive lover. Eventually they would most likely be abused again. In this case, you want those days gone forever and you should let them go.
In short, while these days are gone forever, nostalgia is not a bad thing. We can certainly learn from our past, and to a certain extent it is even perfectly fine and healthy to visit it now and again in memories. However, we are not meant to stay there. We grow and move on, and so does the world. It is a good thing. We often take more positives from our past than negatives. However, we should always look back at both and weigh them out fairly. Therefore, when Don Henley says, “Don’t look back. You can never look back” there is some truth in it if you can’t look back without seeing the full picture. In this case, those days are gone forever, and you should just let them go. However, you can and should look back though if you wish to grow, enjoy, learn, and even for a short time divulge in the memories of your past. Those days are gone forever, but you should not let them go. You should let them make you grow.
(Entry – January 14, 2021)