By Maria DiPasquale, Staff Writer, Emerson College
Here’s a scene with which you might be familiar. It’s Thursday morning. I sit eating my breakfast and shamefully scrolling through each of my social media sites to see what I could have possibly missed in the 8 hours I was sleeping. As soon as I open the Instagram app, I am immediately reminded what day it is: Throwback Thursday. I scroll past grainy baby pictures, manicured prom shots, barely old party photos from last semester. Below each image is the beloved hashtag: “#tbt.”
I don’t pretend to be above this. In fact, I first got started thinking about this while I was home on spring break. I had taken advantage of my boredom and my parents’ photo albums to post a couple baby pictures of myself. As I scrolled through the rest of my friends’ throwbacks, I got to thinking that all my friends were awfully fond of the past. In fact, everyone I could think of had a particular affection for nostalgia.
I thought back to nights sitting in my suite with fellow college freshmen, with one of my suitemates gushing about her middle school days as a Fall Out Boy fangirl and excitedly talking about the upcoming reunion tour for which she has tickets. (According to the Fall Out Boy website on March 18, 2013, all the American dates on the reunion tour are sold out.) I remembered compiling a playlist of throwbacks with my friends and playing them on my birthday. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time my friends (both college friends and home friends) had listened to music and not played at least one “throwback” that produced a great deal of laughter, smiling, and at least one gem of an anecdote from the past.
I couldn’t help but tweet. “Throwback Thursday is the epitome of our generation's obsession with nostalgia,” I wrote. Because we have to admit that, as a generation, we are obsessed with nostalgia. And this goes way beyond the hipster/Tumblr 1990s mania. We’re reaching back to places that are not terribly far away, to places where we were the same height as we are now, with nothing terribly different about us except maybe a different hair color or more embarrassing taste in music.
Here’s a scene with which you might be familiar. It’s Thursday morning. I sit eating my breakfast and shamefully scrolling through each of my social media sites to see what I could have possibly missed in the 8 hours I was sleeping. As soon as I open the Instagram app, I am immediately reminded what day it is: Throwback Thursday. I scroll past grainy baby pictures, manicured prom shots, barely old party photos from last semester. Below each image is the beloved hashtag: “#tbt.”
I don’t pretend to be above this. In fact, I first got started thinking about this while I was home on spring break. I had taken advantage of my boredom and my parents’ photo albums to post a couple baby pictures of myself. As I scrolled through the rest of my friends’ throwbacks, I got to thinking that all my friends were awfully fond of the past. In fact, everyone I could think of had a particular affection for nostalgia.
I thought back to nights sitting in my suite with fellow college freshmen, with one of my suitemates gushing about her middle school days as a Fall Out Boy fangirl and excitedly talking about the upcoming reunion tour for which she has tickets. (According to the Fall Out Boy website on March 18, 2013, all the American dates on the reunion tour are sold out.) I remembered compiling a playlist of throwbacks with my friends and playing them on my birthday. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time my friends (both college friends and home friends) had listened to music and not played at least one “throwback” that produced a great deal of laughter, smiling, and at least one gem of an anecdote from the past.
I couldn’t help but tweet. “Throwback Thursday is the epitome of our generation's obsession with nostalgia,” I wrote. Because we have to admit that, as a generation, we are obsessed with nostalgia. And this goes way beyond the hipster/Tumblr 1990s mania. We’re reaching back to places that are not terribly far away, to places where we were the same height as we are now, with nothing terribly different about us except maybe a different hair color or more embarrassing taste in music.
Playlist made by Jeff McHale
Growing up has always been difficult. But as members of the first true technologically advanced generation, we have a bit of a crutch. What other generation could scroll through photo albums from three to four years ago and see written comments from their friends when they’re feeling homesick? What other generation could simply enter a song into the search bar of Spotify and immediately be taken back to their first middle school dance or to a particularly perfect summer night? What other generation could access their favorite childhood cartoons in a series of clicks and watch them with their friends years later?
As a generation, we cling to the things that once comforted us to deal with the realities of our future. There is an ineffable comfort in nostalgia. But isn’t this a problem? If we continue to go back to a time where we had everything all figured out, we can never figure out the time we’re in now.
Don’t get me wrong, I am part of the problem. I adore my friends from home and reminisce on times past too often. I participate in Throwback Thursday more than I’d like to admit. When I’m dancing with my friends on a Friday night, it feels incomplete without throwing in “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy or “Ignition Remix” by R. Kelly. I’ve watched more episodes of Rugrats on Netflix since coming to college than I have since I watched them in my New Jersey playroom.
I think nostalgia is healthy in moderate doses. It makes me happy that I can post a picture of my friends when I’m missing them on a Thursday afternoon. Sometimes listening to the album that got me through a hard time can help me when I’m having a shitty day. Dancing to an old song can bring a bunch of friends from different places together under separate, yet connected memories. These are all beautiful ideas.
But I catch myself relying too much on this nostalgia to get me through the present. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. I urge us all to remember that as we’re spending our time looking back, we could be making new memories. We must not get stuck in the longing to go back in time and remember that we were completely different people in the past. We need to remember all the things we’ve learned since then that have shaped us into the people we are today. We need to remember how much growing and evolving and experiencing we have left to do. We need to spend more time looking forward than we do looking back.
Nostalgia can be wonderful. There is the oddly beautiful idea that some of my memories of college are already intertwined with memories of the past. Listening to a 2004 Usher album with my college friends oddly connects my 8-year-old self with my 19-year-old self. Taking the good things from the past and applying them to the future is a positive way to engage in this world in which we all want to communicate, grow, and succeed. Being ignorant of the past is another problem on the opposite end of the spectrum. I just want to remind my fellow Generation Y-ers to find a healthy balance between remembering the past, appreciating the present, and planning for the future. There is so much that needs to be changed, so much art that can be created, so many friendships to made. So let’s use the past as a tool, not as a crutch.
Maria DiPasquale is a freshman Writing, Literature, & Publishing major and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Minor at Emerson College. She hails from a lovely, diverse, and liberal little town called Maplewood, New Jersey, a quick 30 minute train ride from New York City. As a result, a dialogue about race was ongoing throughout her childhood, shaping her current interest in equality. She is a feminist who aspires to write stories and novels that draw on equality issues. Her other interests include exploring cities, wandering around museums, buying more used boots than she could ever need, and making long lists of books she wants to read.
As a generation, we cling to the things that once comforted us to deal with the realities of our future. There is an ineffable comfort in nostalgia. But isn’t this a problem? If we continue to go back to a time where we had everything all figured out, we can never figure out the time we’re in now.
Don’t get me wrong, I am part of the problem. I adore my friends from home and reminisce on times past too often. I participate in Throwback Thursday more than I’d like to admit. When I’m dancing with my friends on a Friday night, it feels incomplete without throwing in “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy or “Ignition Remix” by R. Kelly. I’ve watched more episodes of Rugrats on Netflix since coming to college than I have since I watched them in my New Jersey playroom.
I think nostalgia is healthy in moderate doses. It makes me happy that I can post a picture of my friends when I’m missing them on a Thursday afternoon. Sometimes listening to the album that got me through a hard time can help me when I’m having a shitty day. Dancing to an old song can bring a bunch of friends from different places together under separate, yet connected memories. These are all beautiful ideas.
But I catch myself relying too much on this nostalgia to get me through the present. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. I urge us all to remember that as we’re spending our time looking back, we could be making new memories. We must not get stuck in the longing to go back in time and remember that we were completely different people in the past. We need to remember all the things we’ve learned since then that have shaped us into the people we are today. We need to remember how much growing and evolving and experiencing we have left to do. We need to spend more time looking forward than we do looking back.
Nostalgia can be wonderful. There is the oddly beautiful idea that some of my memories of college are already intertwined with memories of the past. Listening to a 2004 Usher album with my college friends oddly connects my 8-year-old self with my 19-year-old self. Taking the good things from the past and applying them to the future is a positive way to engage in this world in which we all want to communicate, grow, and succeed. Being ignorant of the past is another problem on the opposite end of the spectrum. I just want to remind my fellow Generation Y-ers to find a healthy balance between remembering the past, appreciating the present, and planning for the future. There is so much that needs to be changed, so much art that can be created, so many friendships to made. So let’s use the past as a tool, not as a crutch.
Maria DiPasquale is a freshman Writing, Literature, & Publishing major and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Minor at Emerson College. She hails from a lovely, diverse, and liberal little town called Maplewood, New Jersey, a quick 30 minute train ride from New York City. As a result, a dialogue about race was ongoing throughout her childhood, shaping her current interest in equality. She is a feminist who aspires to write stories and novels that draw on equality issues. Her other interests include exploring cities, wandering around museums, buying more used boots than she could ever need, and making long lists of books she wants to read.