Faux Nostalgia

Have you seen Midnight in Paris? Although I'm generally not a fan of Wood Allen stuff... this movie was cute and super weird! Where is he going? Where did the cab come from? How is Marion Cotillard so DAMN GORGEOUS? Who knows. But, the movie dealt with  the destructive nature of nostalgia, and a sense of yearning for the past.

The mystery in the sense of nostalgia comes from our unease with change. And the inability to 'go back'. In the spirit of entering the new year, and with our upcoming adventure looming on the horizon, I'm beginning to feel that am currently living in the past, and that I just haven't caught up to my present yet {living on a boat/somewhere sunny}. This has begun to cause some problems in my day-to-day... as I am lacking considerable amounts of motivation to complete tasks (like my job).

I read a great essay on why we use things like faux-vintage photo filters {like the pic of us above} to recreate the sense of value that comes with truly vintage photos that have been saved for years and years. Having recently gone through a chest of old photos that go several generations back, I can attest to the inherent value they carry - I'll never know what that world was like. As we move this feeling forward we become nostalgic the future's past - our present. The next generation, my kids included, won't know what the world was like now. That moment is gone, and what I have left is a sketchy iPhone photo.

The essay of The Faux-Vintage Photo interestingly describes this phenomenon in the context of social media today. Do I keep a blog, and post 'old-fashiony' photos as a documentation of the present purely for the future?

Here's what he has to say about it:
"We come to see what we do as always a potential document, imploding the present with the past, and ultimately making us nostalgic for the here and now." - Source


Interesting, isn't it? This is more that I usually write in the blog - but I thought it was relevant because of the dramatic changes that are upcoming in our lives. As brave and adventurous as we seem - fear of change and nervousness over the loss of our lives here are definitely still an element in our choices! 

If you're thinking about/currently planning to 'throw it all overboard' know that these things WILL come up! If the pros still outweigh the cons {as they do for us} you'll be ready to move ahead - perhaps a little wiser...