This morning at work I was listening to a podcast that mentioned Florida, which somehow set off a strange series of thoughts that seemed totally disconnected from each other but nonetheless made me feel a certain type of way… bad…sad…nostalgic. From the thought of Florida, it made me look outside and see the nice weather here in Colorado. I wondered if people in Florida wake up feeling more optimistic every day since the weather is usually so nice. Then I ended up feeling nostalgic for my childhood. It's hard to explain but eventually I think I pinned it down to stemming from a sort of mini-depression or grieving period from quitting smoking 1 month and 5 days ago.
We're in the middle of winter, but as the days are getting longer and we've had a few warmer days where I've felt a sense of relief from seasonal depression feelings. There are certain special mornings that feel lighter — brighter. The sun is out in the morning and you don't feel all cramped inside a dim, dismal house or workplace trapped because of the snow and cold temps. You feel like if you walked outside without even putting a hoodie on that you'd be greeted with the warmth of sun and the sounds of birds chirping — and if only it were April, the grass would be green and dew-kissed. That feeling — the one of the lifting of existential dread — made me think of childhood. It made me think of early spring mornings like Easter where I would have been out in the grass in the back yard with my family looking for the Easter eggs they hid. It feels safe. It feels fresh. It smells green. It feels like the present is great and the future is wide open and anything is possible.
Nostalgia is missing that free, happy feeling. And that's how I felt. Like I'm yearning for some old feeling that is gone and in the past.
This could be just due to my age. I'll be 35 this month, and it is probably quite normal to feel a sense of nostalgia and the sadness and yearning for the past that accompanies it. But I can't help thinking that maybe this is partially my mind grieving the loss of its "friend" — cigarettes and nicotine. I really enjoyed smoking, or at least I thought I really enjoyed it. It was like a friend that you would go everywhere and do everything with. It was there through good times and bad times just like a good friend. Losing cigarettes and nicotine have been a lot like losing a friend or a relationship — it's that feeling of knowing that you have to continue to grow and move on and make the best decisions for your future even though it hurts and you miss them. It's not possible to go back into the past and re-live it. You have to move on.
Nostalgia is tricky… I do believe it serves a valuable purpose — maybe to remind us that joy is real — to keep pressing on. But it is dangerous. If you give it too much power and let it linger for too long, it can consume you and you may end up making bad decisions, endlessly trying to chase after that sense of safety and joy. For me, it's best to use a zen meditation approach to thoughts and feelings of nostalgia. Observe them, acknowledge them, even smile and humor them for a minute if you must, but then allow the thought to pass, and don't let yourself be bogged down and consumed with it. You may miss childhood but you can't go back to it. You might have lost a friend, but you can't spend your whole life waiting for them to come back. And you may have quit cigarettes, but there is no going back now. Leave the past in the past. The future is bright, and the grass here is starting to turn green, just like in Florida.
