#8: The nostalgia illusion
Do you ever find yourself caught up in nostalgia, reliving the past, convinced that nothing the future holds can possibly live up to the good times you've already experienced? There are reasons why it's easy to think fondly about the past and to be fearful about the future. The good news is that it's all an illusion - and it's one you can ditch. Here's how.
Do you worry that your happiest times are behind you and that nothing in the future can live up to what you've already experienced? Nostalgia can be compelling. But it also makes us biased.
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and week by week I’ll be drawing on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Imagine that this evening, one of your two closest friends has invited you to dinner at her house. And that a week later, your other closest friend has invited you to dinner at her house. So this evening, you go along to the first friend's house, let's call her Fran. And the dinner she's cooked for you is wonderful. Your other closest friend - we'll call her Sunita - Sunita is also there. And you all have a great time. You're really impressed at the thought that's gone into every aspect of the evening. Fran has remembered what food, wine, activities etc you like and what you don't like. So the next weekend comes around and it's time to go to Sunita's house for dinner. And you have no idea what Sunita has planned but Sunita knows you even better than Fran does. And Sunita is more experienced at cooking and generally organising this sort of event. And she's also just as considerate and thoughtful as Fran. So what would your attitude be as you make your way over to Sunita's house for dinner the weekend after you've all had dinner around Fran's? Here are two possibilities. The first is that you think that evening at Fran's was so great, Sunita's dinner party can't possibly live up to it. In fact, Sunita probably hasn't made dinner at all. Or if she has it will be some stale bread crusts from the back of the cupboard. You just know it's going to be complete rubbish and a massive disappointment. Or second, you might think, wow, I have such a thoughtful and talented friends. I had a great time at Fran's last weekend, and I'm really looking forward to spending the evening at Sunita's house tonight. I'm sure we're all going to have a lovely time. Now hopefully you agree that the first option is a ridiculously pessimistic attitude. I mean, why would you think so little of Sunita, based on what you know about her? All the evidence you have about what Sunita is like points to the evening at Sunita's being just as good as the one at Fran's, or even better. The second option is obviously the more appropriate attitude to take. In fact, surely nobody would seriously take the first attitude. Well, you might think so. But I see people who take the first attitude all the time. I don't mean about dinner parties, I mean about their own past and their future. A lot of the people I see as a coach, take the view that their best and most successful and happiest times are behind them. They see their lives as already having peaked, and now they're on a steady decline. And when they view their future, they do it by comparing it to the past and finding that it comes up short. People with this attitude, say things like, all the good stuff happened before I took that career wrong step, I'll never get back to where I was. Or, I lost the love of my life a couple of years ago, and I just know nothing will ever be as good again. Or, since I became a single parent, I just don't have the time and the energy I once had, I have to face the fact that I'm never going to achieve the things I wanted hoped I'd achieve. Now, the sort of people I'm talking about here are smart, talented people, the sort of people who, from the outside at least look like they've got it made. So why do smart and talented people think in this ridiculously pessimistic way about their futures? And are you one of them? If you are, I think there are two main reasons why you might hold this attitude about your own future. The first is simply that you can see the past but not the future. You have memories of the past but not of the future. So when you look back to the highlights of your past, you can dwell longingly on your memories of the good times and also ignore the less good times. But when you look to the future, there's well, nothing. There are no guarantees. And the second reason, I think is that your model for what happiness looks like is based on your past successes and happiness. Now both of these ways of viewing things are skewed. Let's look at them one by one. So the first, which is just the fact that you can see the past but not the future via your memories. Well, sure there are no guarantees of future happiness, but all the evidence points towards the future being just as bright as the past or even brighter, in fact. I mean, you're older and wiser now, you know yourself and the world better now than you did then, you have more experience now, and a more impressive track record. Your past happiness is evidence for happiness in the future. It's not evidence that you're on a decline. So why on earth would you have so little faith in yourself? I mean, imagine if employers took the attitude towards their job applicants that you're taking towards yourself. I mean, imagine if they responded to impressive CVs by concluding that the applicant has clearly already peaked and should definitely not be employed. If that approach would strike you as strange, then that's your cue to rethink your own view of your future. So what about the second reason for taking a pessimistic view about your future, which was using your past happiness as the model for happiness in general looks like for you. Now, this way of looking at things stacks the odds inappropriately against the future, or to return to the dinner party analogy, dinner at Sunita's is never going to be dinner at Fran's, no matter how amazing the food and the company are at Sunita's. And similarly, your future is never going to be your past, but it can still be its own kind of amazing. Now, people who define happiness for them in terms of what happiness for them looked like in the past, are a bit like people on the rebound from a failed romantic relationship. You know, the sort of people who date carbon copies of their ex, hopefully only temporarily, because they haven't yet moved on and opened their mind to the value of relationships with people who are nothing like their ex. And so if you feel pessimistic about your future, and if you're tempted to think that all the good times are in the past, ask yourself whether you're on the rebound from past happiness. But let's think some more about this idea of judging the future by the standard of the past, because sometimes it might seem that you do have good reason to think that your best times are behind you. It might be that a loved one who you were really, really close to is no longer around. Or you might have been diagnosed with a chronic illness or suffered an injury that will permanently affects what you're able to do with your body. Or it might be that you have children now, or other caring responsibilities. All of these are things that can close off certain futures that you might once hoped that you'd have. So surely these sorts of things give you good reason to think that things will never be the same again, in a bad way. Well, yes, and no. Sometimes things happen that knock us off course, and we realise that the plans we have for our life are no longer possible, and so we need to reset our internal GPS, our internal system that was navigating towards a certain type of future that's no longer available. And we can feel lost for a while as we mourn our imagined future - an imagined future that might include people who are no longer around, or experiences that are not open for you anymore. As well as that, there's the difficulty of the transition period between losing your old plans for the future and devising new ones. But none of this entails the future won't be as bright as we hoped. It just won't be the sort of future that you anticipated. But what about when you're more than just knocked off course? What about the sort of life changes that affect you much more deeply? Who you are now is shaped by the relationships and the experiences you've had to date, and certain life changes, including becoming chronically ill, or disabled, or becoming a parent, or losing someone really close. All those things can change who you are as a person, they can change your personality, they can change your view of what's important in life, they can change your values. That means that you might currently be literally unable to appreciate the sorts of happiness that you might be capable of in the future when you're a different sort of person. Because the sorts of things that will make your future self happy are not necessarily the sorts of things that will make you now happy. The philosopher L A Paul refers to these sorts of experiences that change who you are as a person, and that are impossible to understand fully in advance, transformative experiences. The sorts of examples that she discusses are becoming a parent for the first time, emigrating, fighting in a war and becoming a vampire. Now it's normal to feel fear in these situations, when you've undergone an experience that has basically turned your life on its head, all bets are off, your planned future is no longer relevant. And you need to go back to the drawing board, you're left reeling, and sometimes all you know is that the sort of happiness that you've experienced in the past is no longer available to you. You haven't yet learnt what happiness might look like from now on. So while you have your memories of past happiness, and that's in the bag, when you look to the future, it's just one big scary black box. Of course, that's scary. And this is a sort of thing that drives your inner critic crazy. Because situations like this contain all her least favourite things: change, the unknown, risk. Remember that your inner critic, who I sometimes refer to as your inner helicopter parent, she wants to keep you safe. And she wants you to stick with what you know. And sometimes that's not possible. But in this sort of situation, what I'd like to invite you to do is distinguish between the thought that you know more about what your past contains than about what your future contains, and the thought that there's no happiness in your future. The fact is, if when you look to your past, you recall experiences of being happy and fulfilled, then you already know that you're a person who's capable of those states that you're capable of making them happen for yourself. And this time around, you're faced with the prospect of finding happiness and fulfilment, with more life experience more knowledge about yourself in the world, and a track record of finding happiness. If you did know as much about your future as you know about your past, you'd be excited about it. The word nostalgia applies exclusively to the past. There's no such thing as nostalgia about the future. By definition, it would require knowing what the future contains, and feeling a certain way about it. But have a think about this. If it were possible to feel nostalgic about the future, what would that look like for you? What sort of things might lie in your future that would give you the sort of affectionate fond longing sense that's characteristic of nostalgia about the past? Give that some thought, and then go and create it.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you like to use, and please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful - you can take a screenshot on your phone and send it over to them. For more information and updates about me, the podcast, and my coaching, or just to get in touch and say hi, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com - or follow me on Twitter @AcademicImp or on Facebook @AcademicImperfectionist. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!
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