NowStalgia not ThenStalgia

And so, being rebels at heart, we bypass what we are expected to do at this age and embrace what we are calling NowStalgia. Our take on the word is slightly different from Urban Dictionary’s – it’s less about watching what’s happening in order to be melancholy about it later and more about making music for your now. So when you end up in someone else’s bad movie, go dancing in the rain. When your heart is at sea, come a little closer to the fire.  And don’t forget to dance the hip pity hop through this and every day. It is good to respect the seriousness of life. It is death to surrender to it. And when you can ride the balance between unadvisable foolishness and the life affirming kind of madness that makes everything taste sweeter…and it could again…meet me halfway, son. We will all surf the negative wave. But we digress.  Of course you have heard it before, in between overscheduling your life and puttering through your habits and memories.

The past and the future are not here.  Ever.  It is the Now.  The serene monotonous ever new chance to get it right again or do it so wrong for the first, third or umpteenth time. The Now. Your breath. Your awareness and intention. Your lazy yawn. There is no perfection in the now but there are perfect moments.  As you frown at the blank page or repeat chord changes, disassemble a broken appliance, tend your garden…..as you live in the moment so shall you be. Ask new questions. Seek new answers or examine and affirm old ones.  But stay with us.  Keep looking at the present horizon and lead by example. Too many of us repeat and repeat that safe and sure patterns of the past. Though there is some comfort in what we have mastered or surrendered to, there is real joy in finding ways to give yourself to a present with possibilities. There is a kind of happiness that your years of learning to adapt can create again.  But you must pledge to ration your doting on the past or fretting on the future, like screen time, to just a small part of your day.  If you think of the fruitless dredging of your real and imagined past as wasteful entertainment then you can give it the positive but small place in your life it deserves.  If the fear of the future, your death, the unknown, hold you in it’s gaze for long…those are wasted moments.  Be emotionally wistful always for The NOW.  NowStalgia as defined by know1 is the passionate longing for what is and can be. Right here. Right now. The moments of thought, engagement, struggle and whimsy that are here for the savoring and sharing.  They are the only truly real thing.