Sometimes I feel overwhelmed looking at daily news reports. The onslaught of death, despair, destruction and corruption I see on a regular basis is often more than I can bear.
I’m frequently overcome with anger, frustration, sadness and an overall sense of helplessness. I can’t fix the world, even though I’d like to. I’m just one tiny voice in the wilderness.
Sometimes, to gain some relief, I try to distance myself from all the despair by ignoring the plight of the masses. I try to adopt indifference. However, that seldom works because I invariably witness the plight of an individual who represents the plight of the very masses I’m trying to ignore.
This happened to me in Turkey a couple of years ago. I had stopped at a bakery in Izmir to pick up some sesame-seed cookies. As the young clerk was tallying up my purchases, I noticed a mass of thick cord-like purple scars on his wrists and forearms. I tried to look away but found myself transfixed by such horrible disfigurement. He saw me staring, and simply said, “Syrian prison.” I apologized for staring at him whereupon he lifted his shirt to show me other evidence of the torture he’d endured. I felt sick.
Along with his father and older brother, he’d been imprisoned in Syria. He’d been tied up with heavy wire, then hung with his arms wrenched up behind his back and left that way for days on end. The wires had cut very deeply into his flesh. Both his father and brother had been shot dead.
Eventually, he was released from prison, but he was left crippled, both mentally and physically, by his experience.
At his mother’s insistence, the money the family had saved up was to be used to get him and his sister out of Syria. They were smuggled into Turkey.
As I left the bakery, my thinking immediately reverted to the plight of the masses and with that, again came the terrible sense of helplessness.
Then, another newscast, another newsstand and more anger, sadness and frustration. My God, where to go, what to do to get some relief from a world gone mad?
Nostalgia has become my sanctuary. Either it comes upon me by accident, or I seek it out intentionally.
For me, nostalgia is a safe place. It’s a place where I once was, where I was happy – maybe even at times, euphoric – and where I felt safe. It’s a place of ‘sweet sadness’: sweet because that place once existed; sadness because it no longer exists.
The nostalgia that is triggered by accident is often the result of a sensory event, sight and sound being the most common ones.
One of my more recent retreats into nostalgia was triggered by a statue called “The Lamplighter.” I discovered this beautiful work of art just last year next to Vilnius University in Lithuania.
I love that statue and as I stood looking at it, I found myself humming “The Old Lamplighter.” When I got back to my flat, I brought “The Old Lamplighter” up on YouTube.
I was only about six or seven when this song was popular, but listening to it caused a huge wave of memories to come flooding back. Most of these were of the times I’d spent with my older sister.
The tears that started to flow because she is no longer here were eventually replaced by a smile of gratitude that she’d been here at all. This kind of thinking takes a lot of work, and it doesn’t come easy.
When I saw a notice announcing the death of American singer Tony Bennett, I again found myself being drawn toward the sanctuary of nostalgia.
As I had done so often in the past, I listened once more to his rendition of “Because of You.” I remembered the early ’50s, especially the times with my first love, with whom after 70+ years, I am still in contact.
The 1950s were really an age of innocence. Jitterbug had given way to jive; radio had given way to TV; drive-in movies were all the rage; long skirts, bobby sox and saddle oxfords for teenage girls; Wildroot hair cream, loafers and blue denim jeans for teenage boys. What a lovely ‘place’ to have been and how lucky for me that I was there.
Another accidental trigger to nostalgia occurred on one of my dawn treks along a beach in Larnaca, Cyprus.
I saw the profile of a man standing on the shore looking out towards the horizon. In my mind, I began to hear “Stranger on the Shore,” a haunting clarinet piece popular in the early ’60s.
I was immediately whisked back to my carefree days at UBC when this piece of music seemed to be playing everywhere.
As students, we were all so cocky and full of confidence, hope and optimism. The world was ours, we were the future, and it was all going to be smooth sailing from here on in. Reality hadn’t set in yet.
Sometimes I activate nostalgia directly by reading through the many journals I’ve kept over the years. Other times, I slowly peruse my treasure trove of photographs.
My journals and photographs allow me to reconnect emotionally with another time and place. I can revisit the cast of characters I fell so much in love with and savour the wonderful experiences we once shared. I sometimes feel a pinch of poignancy, but it’s a good feeling.
Nostalgia may not work for everyone, but it works for me and for that, I’m truly grateful. It provides a sense of balance and a thread of continuity to my life. It allows me to cope so much better with the world I live in today.
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