Nostalgia

"Why, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, do you want to ruin--wait a second. Who's the girl?" -- Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother

It is my belief that, as a person, I am more prone to nostalgia than most. When I drive back to Newaygo, I often take a longer route--I-96 to the East Beltline to 10 Mile to Algoma--just to pass by all the places I used to go with people when I used to be there more often. There were the late nights at the IHOP near Celebration Cinema, the two trips to Dunhill to get fitted for and then pick up my tuxedo with Andrew when he got married. The aforementioned Celebration Cinema was where I saw all three Lord of the Rings movies; for the last one, my friends spent two straight weeks convincing me to join them in dressing up for it (guh), and when I went as Gandalf people there actually asked me to take pictures with them. Turning from the Beltline onto 10 Mile takes me within sight of Jody's, where I went and hung out with church friends all the time. Just a short walk from that is where the D&W used to be when I was five and we still lived in Rockford.

So many of those friends that I spent my formative years with are gone now. A few are still around. Not many. And it would be impossible, I know, to go back to some of those places without feeling the slight heartache of missing not only people, but times together. Or just times, period; I still remember pacing around the wooden deck behind Frenz Coffee House, memorizing my toast on the morning of Andrew's wedding.

That's what nostalgia is; it comes from the Greek words nostos, meaning a homeward journey, and algos, meaning pain.

Of course, I don't want to go back to those times. They're completely idealized, or even romanticized, for me now, but then, too, there was always something to worry about. I started thinking about this because I was feeling that nostalgia, thinking about what it would be like to go back to those places without those people and situations. But how often do I think about the future: what it would be like to go to some of those old places with a new person or new people and be able to share with them some of the things that made me who I am? I know the places in Ann Arbor that are going to be like that for me; what if there are some here that I don't know about yet? What are the places that are going to be like that for me wherever I live next?

Nostalgia is good, but optimism is better :)