Nostalgia Overwhelm

Note: I kind of apologize for this second random rant. It's just that if I wait to write until I get these topics all figured out, I won't write. So, when you see "Thinking Time," you have my permission to just pass if half formed thoughts don't work for you.

In just a few months I've attended two memorial services and just last week a dear friend was killed in a motorcycle accident. Add a couple of very sick friends and our country and a world that seems to be ruled by mad men.

Pile on daily doses of video clips of entire countries being bombed into non-existence by fear-driven populations of another country. Add thousands of children being reduced to chunks of flesh, and in our own country, innocent people being imprisoned and killed by nationally funded thugs.

Add economies being decimated by war, greed and unheard of levels graft and it gets more than a little overwhelming.

Then just this morning I was grabbing coffee at Starbucks and a quiet piece of pop music from the 70s came on the music system. I was hit with a vast wave of nostalgia. The music brought back feelings and images from my college days (even though it was released in 1983). What smacked me upside the head was how many of the lyrics could have made today's headlines!

I spent a few minutes thinking about my college days and why they felt so, solid, is the best word I could come up with. The large buildings full of people on a mission, the college fountain sparkling in the sunshine and huge ultramodern bell tower all seem now like symbols, not of the times, after all the 60s and 70s were full of chaos and rapid change, but the college, an institution that had been there for a hundred years. It was solid. It wasn't going anywhere.

The difference, at least in my 20 year-old mind, was that even in the chaos of the 70s there were still institutions that worked, or maybe, more accurately, worked for me. AND, my assumption was that they would continue to work.

Ok, I've ranted long enough. And there will be more blasts of nostalgia. After all, I'm 74 and a lot of water has gushed under the bridge.

Apparently, the next skill I'll be learning is how to live this phase of life, as full of chaos as it is, joyfully and productively. And doing battle with the nearly overwhelming desire to crawl into a hole and live with my memories.