Is Nostalgia Addictive?

It's like old home week around here, as I found myself watching a few episodes of the show Party of Five last night online.I am a sucker when it comes to nostalgia, I just can't help letting my mind wander back in time and paint rosy pictures of life gone by. It takes very little to make a goofy smile of remembrance appear, as it did last night the entire time I was watching what was actually a rather depressing episode of Party of Five (though truthfully, which episodes of that show weren't depressing?).

I was addicted to this show in prime time. I distinctly remember my senior year of high school how a friend and I would meet up first thing Thursday morning to discuss the events of the previous night's show. Last night I stumbled upon the free episodes and couldn't seem to help myself. I can't even remember why I googled it in the first place, but I stayed up until 1am, watching it in parts on YouTube because I just couldn't stop.

Is nostalgia addictive? I did name the blog after the show (I started writing not long after watching my first episode in years) because I like the sentiment behind it. After all, we are a little party of three, finding our way through the world, albeit with much less drama than the Salingers seemed to face. But I think I also just liked the connection to the past.

I was doing the math last night and realized that my son won't start kindergarten until 2013, 31 years after I did. The world he knows is so unbelievably different from mine, as mine was from that of my parents, but it still seems odd to me that he will always live in a wired world where information is constantly at your fingertips and technology is obsolete before it hits the shelves.

What will he look back at fondly? He won't have to wait for the next morning to talk to his friends about his favorite TV show. He will text or email or tweet or do something else that hasn't even been invented yet. He'll watch shows streaming on the computer or saved on a DVR, while I taped mine on VHS. The world changes every second and I can't help but worry about my little man, caught up in the forever swirling world of 21st century life.

I'm sure he'll be fine, because this is all he knows. I will be the one left afloat, fumbling at what is new and casting longing glances back to what I considered an easier time, just like my parents did when I was a kid and so on and so on. I just hope that this ever changing, techno-driven world doesn't rob him of what I consider so important, the opportunity to look back and recognize that it was pretty good back then, even if we didn't have flying cars.