Twisted Nostalgia, by Amber Averay
Why is it that the more we have, the unhappier we are? Is it the build up of pressure that comes with every achievement reached? The need to have more, to push ourselves harder, to never accept what we have as the best for us?
I see people who buy a home – a goal many of us have but most will never kick – and they’re happy. Until they decide they want a bigger one. More bedrooms. Larger kitchen. More yard. So they sell and go into debt for that bigger house.
They buy their dream car. They are proud. They saved and budgeted and did everything they could to get this vehicle…until they see one that’s better. Faster. Greater technology. Nicer colour. So they sell, and take out a loan to get this ‘better’ machine…
Is it weird to feel nostalgic about a time in which I never lived? To look at portraits and read books about times long past and wistfully imagine easier times? Boiling hot days without airconditioning, freezing winters without heating? Hard labour, day in, day out. Beds riddled with lice, homes filled with rats and mice, communities falling to the plague, dirty water, disease, drought, famine, unwashed bodies, rotting teeth, the harsh reality of the sovereign’s law, brutal punishments…how, compared with the benefits of today, can I look at times such as those and miss something I never had? Have memories of a time I never lived?
I know it’s twisted, this strange sense of nostalgia for days lived centuries before my birth. How I dream of a time where, realistically, things were worse off than we have now. But while everyone else fantasises about the bigger house, the flashier car, the landscaped yard, the expensive shoes, I long for old gowns, ancient castles, disease-ridden communities, stained rushes, fleas, mites, bugs, and the rest…
I am clearly not normal. I get that. And I’m not sorry.
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