Nostalgia Isn’t working out for me

Nostalgia Isn’t working out for me

Nostalgia is a funny thing isn’t it? Industry plays on nostalgia all the time. TV networks revive TV shows to capture the large audience those shows once commanded.

People tune in to get the same good feeling they got the first time the show was on the air, sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t.

In my case, my nostalgia trip is not working. Here’s how it all started. I’m a big fan of 90’s cartoons like Captain Planet, The Magic School Bus, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, Tailspin and The Gummi Bears. When I was a kid it was hard to catch these shows on the air when I was allowed to watch TV.  That made it so rare and so special. I wasn’t allowed to watch much TV and so any time I got to see these shows on their air it was fun and magical. There were these characters and they were having adventures and going places and doing amazing and magical things. I wanted to do that too, at least I did at 10 anyway.

But where is that Disney magic for my 90’s childhood?

Playing into the nostalgia of people like me, Disney and other companies have widely put these TV shows on popular streaming services and put out DVDs with the complete series of these shows. Recently, I finally invested in several of these sets and when they arrived I eagerly popped in my first disk. I even bought a good strain of cannabis to enjoy with a resurgence of my childhood. I was excited to experience the excitement and special nature of watching these shows that were subscription-only when I was a child.

The familiar introduction played with the catchy music and I was entralled again. However, I discovered, after a few minutes of watching that I was bored. My eyes turned to my phone and I found myself skipping through shows or skipping ahead a bit. I was surprised and I started to feel sad. Where was that magical feeling?

At first, I thought it might be the content involved. Maybe it was just the wrong show. But after cycling through several shows, I found myself feeling rather sad because it just wasn’t the same. There was no magic. There was no hopeful feeling. I didn’t feel a sense of wonderment and magic. I was just bored with the whole thing. However, I noticed that some shows do seem to do the trick, at least sort of. 

Thank you for Being a Friend

Shows like The Golden Girls seem to be right up my alley. I can put on random episodes of that show and do house work. Other great 80s favorites like Hart to Hart and Dynasty are really fun to watch. It’s a world before cellphones with lots of shoulder pads and drop waist fashion. I can watch those shows by the hour and enjoy them a great deal. So what was it about the cartoons that doesn’t seem to give me that special feeling?

I think the sad reality is that re-capturing childhood is a more difficult thing than I originally imagined. As many people know, I’ve had a sort of crisis of identity over the past year in the aftermath of The Cameron Cowan Show. I really had to re-evaluate what I was doing and who I was, as a person. It was easy to fall back to the last time in my life I had a strong sense of myself. This process has been a re-discovery of likes and dislikes and it has been an emotionally difficult journey. This stop on the nostalgia journey didn’t pan out the way I wanted because the sad reality is that I’m not that care-free child anymore. The difficult struggle is that I’m now an adult with adult problems and difficulties and the silly ideas, thoughts and dreams of my childhood have simply fallen away. They aren’t relevant to my very adult needs, wants, and desires. 

Nostalgia didn’t work for me because while those TV shows stayed the same; I changed. 

So where does that leave me now? If I can’t recapture better times and just cling to the past like a young swimmer afraid of deep water, what am I to do? The present offers so little to me it almost doesn’t seem worth trying to engage with it. Life feels like a dish rag whose time has come to an end. It’s all been wrung out and threadbare and no matter how much more I demand from it, it’s just ready for the dust-bin. Clearly, it’s time to move on. The only question now is, to what? How can you enjoy life more and feel really fulfilled in our turbulent environment when the past just seemed better and more hopeful? Trading the hopes and dreams to be and live in these fictional worlds seems like something too important to give up. It was a privilege to exist in those cartoon and live action worlds. How can reality even begin to keep up? 

Deep and intense stories like Game of Thrones or Better Call Saul don’t offer any hope for the future or create wonderfully glamorous worlds that filled my imagination. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere near Westeros and I lived through the early 00s when Better Call Saul is set. I’m in no mood to relive the heady days of 2004. I’m adrift and I don’t know where to go next. I don’t know what to do next. I just don’t know what is next. But I do know this: Nostalgia has offered no hope for me. Should I sell the DVDS?

Turns out Nostalgia is really complicated! I watched these videos while preparing for this piece and I learned much about how our brains work and how these feelings have developed throughout the ages!