Every week, there is a featured article about nostalgia. Things that we remember from our past and, for some inexplicable reason, have stuck with us.
Some are from distant memories of childhoods lived and recollected with great fondness. Others talk about an incident from adulthood. In all cases, they feature an event that has stayed with us as a “ keeper “ in the file cabinet called our memory.
When people approach their end of useful life ( according to the young smart arses that think that they will live forever, or perish due to climate change before their 30th birthday ) it seems to be that our minds retreat to happier times that our minds chose to save, while deleting so many thousands of days.
Why is that?
What is it that makes our brains go through 365 days a year and choose ONE day, ONE moment, ONE event?
Or even edit out several years and choose to press save at a particular moment in that vast and inconceivably intricate thing we call a brain?
This mass of cells that, have through some miracle of human evolution, assembled themselves within our heads is nothing short of staggeringly magnificent.
We accept this pilot that sits in the driver’s seat of our bodies and ferries us through our lives without question. We just KNOW that our pilot, while occasionally falling asleep at the wheel, is largely vigilant from the day we are born until the day we die.
There are certainly times when this pilot loses his greatest friend: the navigator. When this happens, the pilot flies blindly on and we see our friends and family fall victim to dementia or alzheimers.
Sometimes, the pilot and the navigator are well and truly in control, but there is damage in the wiring and a stroke victim is left unable to contact ground control – the pilot and the navigator just keep flying in circles around the airfield – and communication with the control tower is cut off.
For most of us, however, our old pilot, navigator and trusted friends in the control tower are doggedly performing their jobs and plotting our voyages with such experience and skill that the new up and coming “ aces “ are no match for our old mates at the helm of this aircraft we call our human body.
Like all old battle weary soldiers, we remember our greatest battles and our best moments when we flew missions of extraordinary brilliance.
Like Ginger Lacey, the World World 2 Ace pilot who was shot down 9 times in 16 weeks in the Battle of Britain. I doubt that he remembered the times when he flew without incident. He, I suspect, remembered and pressed “ save “ to those that he won and defeated the enemy; the ones he lost and nearly lost his life; the ones that cost him his friends their lives or their limbs.
I think that we remember things because they are worth remembering.
We filter out the inconsequential and the things that should be censored or best forgotten.
We save those things that MATTER.
When we look at our nostalgic posts, there is a common thread to the articles and the comments made: they are things that matter to us.
Whether they be a childhood holiday, a trip through the outback or a battle fought on a hill against children long forgotten, we remember that which deserves remembering.
The first time someone ate a hamburger with cheese and pineapple on it; a ghost jumping on a bed or a corner shop that was run by a memorable character.
We select things like the gang we belonged to that rode through the streets or fields we called home and we remember the people who made us who were are.
The events that formed our lives and our characters and our sense of self.
What have we given our children today? Lives of fear and confusion? Where they are being educated by transgender drag queens and told that they are not who they think they are?
That babies are worthless, and, but for some quirk of our mother’s mind set at the time, we could have been deprived of the life we have valued, lived and that our pilot, navigator and control tower have kept safe for decades?
That they are bad because they were born with white skin? That being born in the country they call home has made them invaders?
We must surely see that the crew in charge of these little children’s minds are confused are having a tough time keeping these little ones on course and on track.
No wonder so many parents are taking their children out of school in the hopes that they can fly under the radar.
