What’s the benefit in going back to your past? How much does nostalgia cost?

Do you risk spoiling happy memories by replacing them with the reality of today where all that was familiar may have since moved on? For example, you could go back to your favourite place to hang out when you were you were younger only to find out it’s probably a Starbucks now.

Are you simply going back to old haunts because it’s an interesting thing to do? It can be fun to meet up with old friends and see old places, but as you may know from school reunions you may have been or invited to, there is always a risk that you may no longer have anything in common with your old friends and how would that make the you of now feel?

Or perhaps a more appropriate question to ask yourself could be:

‘What are you looking for in your past that you don’t currently have in your life?

Reliving past ‘glories’ can be a lovely thing in one sense and from time to time, it can be fun, but surely now is the best place to be because we have the power to influence our lives at this moment, even if at times we may not feel like that and the truth is that we have no power whatesoever to change events in the past.

If you were to live more now, you could be creating present and future moments of joy instead of looking wistfully at the past at supposedly better times. Were they actually better times or have you just romanticized them, quietly glossing over the negative things that went on?

Wouldn’t it make you more aware of enjoying what you’re doing now as opposed to what you may have done in the past? 

Wouldn’t living now and not going back make who you are now much happier than who you may have been? 

Everything may have a cost, so sometimes the question is what are you prepared to pay?

The price of going back to things you can’t change and living on past glories risking the fact that they may no longer be as glorious?

Or taking action and perhaps a risk in doing something today to take you forward to live the life you want to live?

It took me a long time to learn that I would rather do the latter. What about you?