on (2000s) nostalgia

So to give some context:

I mostly grew up in the late 90s/early 2000s, so my perfect afternoon was playing Final Fantasy VII, get some friends together for Mario Kart 64 or message my crush on ICQ or MSN while listening to some of the catchiest pop-punk songs the world has ever seenGoing to the cinema to watch American Pie was something I looked forward to for what felt like ages, since nothing could ever be funnier than that movie, right?

I'm kinda known among my circle of friends as "the retro guy" - I even repurposed our guest room to house my elder consoles like my Nintendo 64, my PS2, my dreamcast and my gamecube - so I have been thinking a bit about what draws me to immerse myself in what amounts to spiritual time travelling back to those times.

Now the obvious answer would be a longing for what people always call a "simpler time", where you're supposed to have no worries - basically that whole "innocence of youth" thing.

Thing is, while obviously there were good times, I also vividly remember not being all that happy most of the time.

I was ruthlessly bullied for being mostly introverted, which lead to kind of a weak image in my class, so when I had a crush on one of the girls in my grade they wouldn't even dream of dating someone with self-esteem as low as mine (and rightly so I might add, you gotta love yourself because someone else can love you).

When I finally found a girl that liked me back, she cheated on me within a month, which, over half of my life later still stings sometimes. In the years that followed that event, I was so concerned with questioning whether someone really liked me, or was just pretending to, that I fumbled a lot of friendships and possible relationships. After all, if someone was nice to me, it couldn't possibly be because they actually liked me, it had to be because they wanted something from me or they just wanted to make fun of me, right?

On the other hand I had a best friend which I've known from the first day of school, with whom I played so many games, watched so many movies and did so much fun bullshit with, that I could fill a book just talking about that. We still regularly meet up to do exactly that, and he even got to be my best man 1,5 years ago. Dude's my brother in everything but blood and there's nothing I could realistically think of that would make me turn my back on him.

What I'm getting at is, that despite me having some very fond memories that I wouldn't trade for the world, I'm not exactly pining to feel that small, that unlikeable and that left out again - So why would I, time and time again, go back there in my mind and in my interests?

I learned, over the last few years where I got into retro game collecting, while visiting concerts of Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, Blink 182 and Alien Ant Farm, is that nostalgia not necessarily means going back. It also means accepting that some things cannot be changed. Experiencing bad times makes the the good times more significant, because they make each other matter.

If you're always just happy, it will never stand out, it will become just a a constant trot that will blend together into insignificance after a while. Experiencing sadness, anger and shame makes happiness, content and joy stand out, which in turn makes sadness, anger and shame bearable.

So, since I can't actually change everything that happened, since I can't travel back, smack myself upside the head and tell myself to not overthink everything, I can take what made life joyful even then and transplant it into my modern everyday life.

I can share aspects of what made me me with the people that are going to make me become future me. And nothing makes me happier than seeing peoples faces light up when they get into obscure local multiplayer games that I enjoyed, or when they laugh their ass off about some shitty movie that I thought was just the greatest as a teen (Might Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie anyone?).

Nostalgia can be harmful, when viewed from the perspective of people not being able to let past slights go, but it also can be a great tool to healing past wounds by appreciating what made you carry on despite them.

Now excuse me, I have to shred out some combos in Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3.