nostalgia

oh wow. there is not much else to be said after one has spent an evening rummaging through old letters and photographs contained within two flimsy old shoe boxes covered in outdated wrapping paper. letters and photographs captured from several years back, which kept me entertained for a good few hours. nostalgia was on the menu for tonight, and i got handed a huge serving. not that i am complaining, but there were definitely bittersweet emotions felt this evening.

there is something about this secondary emotion that is drug-like. so i took it upon myself to find a proper definition of the word. this is what hit home for me:
"a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time".
oh my word this could not read more true for what i experienced tonight. now don't get me wrong, i am in love with my current place in time, but there is something about the past that is, as i said drug-like, finding you yearning to go back, just for a moment to relive some of the feelings and have those conversations with people, who have since changed too much for you to relate to anymore like you once did. and you find yourself missing them.

letters are the best things around. i believe in this whole-heartedly. they are time captures, raw and real. there is no e-mail, no text message or any other modern technological device that could replace receiving a letter from someone. and when you go back and read it, years later, you see their handwriting, their scibbles in the corners of the page, you feel as though you have been taken back in time to the moment when you first received it, and all the feelings that came with it. and you miss who you were, and who they were, and the friendship you two once shared. well thats at least where i have found myself. its sad how people change, and how when before you had so much in common and the chemistry was so real, how suddenly you can just wake up one day and its gone. nostalgia i tell you - "a sentimental yearning for a happiness of a former place in time"

gosh. but all of this makes me sound like i am at a terrible place in my life which i want to escape, which i am TOTALLY not. i love my life, and the people in it and appreciate everything that has brought me to where i am today. it's just, i find myself wishing that some things, some relationships from the past, could have turned out differently. but hey, life is life right, and everything happens for a reason (gosh, i hate how cliche i sound).

so nostalgia, has taught me something tonight. and that is, if nothing else, learn to live in the moment everyday and capture everything you experience with a happy heart. don't ever let yourself regret anything, because before you know it you'll be wishing you could go back to that time in your life. appreciate every person that comes into your life, and don't allow them to become a character you wish was never cast in your script. and remember that it is a good thing to feel nostalgic every once in a while, hey its a sign you have lived a good life. just make sure not to dwell for too long - you might just miss out on the incredibly possibilites for happiness in the present.