This was the introductory note to my May 30, 2021 newsletter. Enjoy!
If you’re lucky, you’ll have a long life.
Living long enough means you’ll have more chances to experience nostalgia, which Google defines as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”
My most recent bout of nostalgia was this last weekend when Bridgett and I went to the Film Forum to see the restored print of Melvin Van Peebles’s first film, The Story of a Three Day Pass. It took me back to my college days and discovering foreign films 30 years ago at the old Pittsburgh Playhouse. Initially, I felt what anyone feels when you’re caught in the grip of nostalgia: A sense of loss and the awareness of how much time has passed between then and now. As you know, when you start measuring time in decades, it’s no joke.
But there’s no going back. So when I pushed past that sense of loss, I saw that on the other side is a sense of possibility. That’s what I’ve tried to hold onto since then. Not the focus on the passing of three decades, but that sense that there are still possibilities to be explored, just as there were back then. That sense of possibility should give us fuel to continue creating the lives that we want to live and the work we want to see in the world.
In that way, nostalgia is a powerful motivator.
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