I Wish I Had An Accurate Translation In Latin For "In Remembrance of Those We Have Lost"

A week ago, my cousin died. We'll never be sure, but it was likely suicide. As one could imagine, I was pretty upset. There's not a lot left for me to say, except for this:

I am greatful for the influence he had on my life. The shitty Asian cinema I so love and my passion for foreign film in general was a direct result of the time (however limited) we spent together. He was amusing when he was in a good mood, and I'll always think fondly of him.

That being said... I'm really determined to take away something positive from this loss. He wasn't there for himself; he refused the help of others, and refused to help himself. I won't allow myself to be like that again. I am worth preserving and I will persevere because I have people who care about me. I care about me.

FINIT

The Dangers of Nostalgia

I know that I'm the only person who reads my blog. I don't write for others, I write to relieve my mind of the burden of too many (or too painful) thoughts. So I'm going to get rather personal, more than any of the other entries I've posted thus far, because I know I won't be causing a scandal that is discovered by everyone I know because very few people I know will read it, and those who do I'm not worried about.
It is painful and a little shameful for me to admit, but necessary nonetheless: I've wasted too much of my life, a mere 25 years, longing for the past, or pining for the future, and not just appreciating the present. Nostalgia robbed me of my teenage years; when I should have been actively seeking to be a little rebellious and spend more time out with my friends, I was laying in bed; yearning for a time period when life was simpler and life had more meaning and I wouldn't have been ridiculed for my intelligence, but valued for it. Or it was the opposite: I was lost in my dreams of moving to NYC and becoming a respected academic; bent on proving to all of the assholes I grew up with that I would amount to more than they did.
The only period in my life in which I truly feel as though I lived was May of 2005-May of 2006. This is where I go in my mind when reality strikes me down; the time when I became a person most resembling who I always wanted to be (attractive, outgoing, intellectually alluring), when I achieved an extended bit of happiness with school, my family life, and my social life. Not to mention, the city. My love affair with Manhattan was at it's highest then, the scenes in my mind are straight out of a Woody Allen flick or some other rose-colored movie lens.
This is where I retreated to during grad school. And it's where I retreated to as I suffered through my unemployment depression for the second half of 2011. And I swear, if I had a time machine, I wouldn't zap back to Spring '06 strolling down Broadway in Soho: I'd go back a mere 6 months and savagely beat the nostalgia right out of my brain.
Because here is the hard, sad, uncomfortable truth: nostalgia is a dangerous drug. Wishing for "the good old days" means wishing for the return of all that they entailed, because you can't pick and choose history. I'll quote Patton Oswalt, a comedian who was speaking in an interview about his role in the film Young Adult:
"[Nostalgia is] almost like if you want the same good times to keep happening, that’s what’s dangerous. Good times can keep happening, just not the same ones and if you expect to be the same person having the same good time, then that’s also really dangerous."

It's ok to break out the old scrapbook every once in a while and reminisce with old friends. It's only natural; it's human to reflect on your past, because in the very cerebral sense, perception can be of things in the past or of things in the present only. Think about it: everything that you remember, that you've ever done is past tense, you already did it, except for whatever it is you're doing right now, and  oh - that's now in the past too!

But to wish that you can go back and relive a moment in your life, no matter how sweet or amazing it was, is to damn yourself into being unhappy with your present. I'm not saying your present is all that great; it could be fairly shitty at work or school or at home. Whatever aspect of your life is sucking could, if you're anything like me, cause you to wish for a time from before the problem even existed. But how about what Chuck Klosterman said in his blog entry Nostalgia on Repeat (which was somewhat unrelatedly about eras of music):

"Certain problems never disappear. Sometimes that's because there's no solution to whatever the problem is. But just as often, it's because the problem isn't problematic; the so-called "problem" is just an inexact, unresolved phenomenon two reasonable people can consistently disagree over."

I always get caught up in this loophole, which is a phenomenon that often exists outside of nostalgia- induced crises. It could be that, even though something makes you uncomfortable or unhappy, it may not exactly be a problem. As a species we're naturally curious and we seem to like to find patterns and solve unknowns (um, why else would we torture ourselves with calculus, if not to use it to invent spacecrafts to explore the galaxy, which until very recently, was unknowable to humanity?). Mysteries disturb us; but being mysterious doesn't necessarily mean "suspicious." I learned that lesson the hardest way possible. It is hard; being faced with something and not knowing what the cause is, especially when it relates to things that directly effect your happiness (jobs, family, relationships). But speaking from experience, the wrong escape is definitely nostalgia. And I don't mean in the cultural sense: it's one thing to watch Mad Men and long for a time when drinking copious amounts of brandy at the office was normal. I mean the powerful recollection of strong emotions (induced by memories)– and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives.

Rather than discarding the "problem" and losing yourself in times past and resenting the present because you're not feeling now what you used to feel (insert moment here), you should rationally try and identify what that problem is. But first, some backstory on the nostalgia from a literary/psychologcal viewpoint.

The biggest reason most academics (including most music/art critics) tend to disparage nostalgia is obvious: It's an uncritical form of appreciation. If you unconditionally love something from your own past, it might just mean you love that period of your own life. In other words, you're not really hearing "Time of Your Life." What you're hearing is a song that reminds you of a time when you were happy, and you've unconsciously conflated that positive memory with any music connected to the recollection. You can't separate the merit of the song from the time when you originally experienced it. The counter to this argument is that this seamless integration is arguably the most transcendent thing any piece of art can accomplish, but I'm not just talking about art, now am I?

A secondary criticism boils down to self-serving insecurity; when we appreciate things from our past, we're latently arguing that those things are still important — and if those things are important, we can insist our own life is equally important, because those are the things that comprise our past. The counterargument here is that personal history does matter, and that the size of one's reality is the size of one's memory.

A third criticism is that nostalgia is lazy, arrested, and detrimental to progress. The counter to this would be that even those who hate nostalgia inevitably concede it feels good, and feeling good is probably the point. There are other arguments that can be made, but these are the main three; if you're "pro-" or "anti-" nostalgia, a version of your central thesis inevitably falls somewhere on this spectrum. And in all three cases, both sides of the debate are built around that bridge between the past action (hanging out at this place, drinking this type of soda, watching this TV show) and the experience of being alive. The fact that we are nostalgic for things which transport us back to an earlier draft of ourselves can either be perceived as wonderful or pathetic.

I will say: at times, it's the most wonderful feeling in the world. Revisiting a past happiness has saved me from the depths of despair... but it's also in advertantly put me in that hole in the first place, too. From the outside, someone lost in the past can seem pathetic, but I don't think that it is that either. It's not as simple as "people who love the past more than the present are losers." It's only pathetic if the person forsakes everything mediocre they do have to recapture something awesome they once had, which is what is addressed in Patton's film Young Adult.

What I'm really trying to say, then, I guess is: it is folly to try and recreate a past happiness, because it is impossible to assemble all of the factors that were in play which resulted in your being happy. Even identifying all of the contributors is impossible. That old "you can't go home" saying is true in the sense that it's meant: even if you go back to the place where you were happy, and even if those same people are still there, and you take up the same old job or return to the same school, it's not the same.

That's why I don't feel the same way sitting on the Ronkonkoma train to Penn Station as I did 6 years ago. That's why I don't experience elation walking down Broadway in Soho, or why I don't feel the same way sitting in Union Square Park. It truly terrified me the last few times I went into the city: why aren't I ecstatic right now? Did I lose my ability to be happy? Do I not love this place anymore?

And it finally dawned on me: I do still love Manhattan, very much. But it's not the same place I lived in; it's a different version than the place I fell so desperately in love with. I'm different too... I've had new experiences and done other things and no matter how badly I want it to be, I can't "go home." It doesn't exist anymore.

That's not to say that wherever you are now (either geographically or existentially) is where you should be. It may be undesirable for a number of reasons. But be objective: is it that bad, or just bad in comparison to where you were when you were at your most happy? I bothered to ask myself this question about two months ago, and it sort of changed my life.

No, I'm not where I wanted to be or on a strait path to where I wanted to go by age 25. The economy and other societal factors have prevented me from gaining the type of employment I went to school for, and as a direct result of this I'm not in the financial position that would allow me to do the last thing on my "do before you're 30" checklist: have a child with my husband. When I was unemployed, it ate at me that many people I knew were doing the very things I wanted. I wondered daily whether my life would have been better had I chosen a different path; would I have gotten a job right out of grad school if I stayed at NYU? Would we have been better off trying to live in the city?

The "what ifs" blinded me from appreciating the "I haves" - I was married, we lived in a small but not bad apartment together, my husband was paying the rent, my family was nearby and supportive, I had friends (although my time with them was limited), I had my physical health. I'm trying very hard to steer clear of the "what if" trap. Mostly because, if things had panned out differently, I wouldn't have what I have now, and what I have now (thought not exactly what I wanted) is something worth appreciating. My life is immensely desirable to people living in poverty stricken nations: I'm not starving, or enduring political/religious/ethnic persecution, I have a sturdy home that wasn't washed away by a natural disaster. I have my parents who are good people, and a set of grandparents who adore me, and I even have a set of in-laws that are growing on me. I have friends who care about my happiness, and a job I like. Most importantly: I have my husband, who I love just as intensly as I did when I started dating him almost 6 years ago.

I can't change the past, and I won't dwell in it any longer. It's time to find new things that make me happy, to make new memories to look back on fondly. It's time to assess the present and discover what is in my power to change and to accept what I can't change, and in turn, what changes would be most beneficial to make. Change has always been scary for me, because it means a break from the familiar - perhaps a happy - past. But people are always changing, and it doesn't mean I'm losing who I was (attractive, outgoing, intellectually alluring) - just that I'm becoming a newer version of me. Obviously, people can can become worse versions of themselves - take Lindsay Lohan for instance. She took to booze and drugs and became a sadder version of herself, which was previously someone with a promising acting career. Just because I'm not the teacher I wanted to be doesn't make me a failure, although for a while it felt like I was. I made certain academic choices and I wound up unable to get a job in my field. Could it be that if I went somewhere else for my MS I might have made connections which would have resulted in me getting a job? Sure, anything is possible. But I can't ruminate on that possibility, I can't go back and "turn left" at that path. I can only move forward. And I don't have to accept my fate as an administrative assistant forever - may be the job market will improve and I'll try again in the near future to be a teacher. But for the time being, this is where I am. I'm fortunate that I like the job I have even though my knowledge is not being utilized much at all. Most people aren't as lucky as I am in that respect and I can only say this: things may suck, but you have the ability to look for alternatives, it just might be a while before anything good comes along. It's worth pursuing so try not to get discouraged or jaded; it took me 7 months to find any full-time job.

It also occurs to me that what I just lived through was probably a painful stretch on the journey to adulthood. When you're young, you fantasize about the future - practically all of school is addressing "what do I want to be when I grow up?" But then you get to an age when you're supposedly "grown up," and all you want to do is relive the past. The proper response to this phenomenon must be the realization that you can't recreate the past: you must forge a new future, with people (who may or may not be the same people from your past) who are deserving of your affection and time.

Epiphany completed.

Chicken or the Egg = Language or the Thoughts

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about words and the English language. Most people don’t think much or at all about the language they speak; that sort of meta-awareness is typically reserved for writers or English professors. I think a major contributor to this reality is also that many people don’t really have a need to examine their mental word bank. Expressing anger or sadness or happiness is completed with ease, using basic words that any non-native English speaker would learn during his/her first month in class. Words like “frustrated” or “content” or “depressed.”

But for those of us who are cursed with meta-consciousness as well as a highly (perhaps over-) developed range of emotions, the usual suspects in the emotion word bank just aren’t cutting it anymore. Thus I bring up something I read in an article called “Lazy Language, Lazy Thought,” which was published on moreintelligentlife.com in 2007:

“The task that suffers most from mangled language is thought, when people communicate with themselves. If they cannot express themselves to themselves,        they have no chance of expressing themselves to other people.”

This notion sums up something I’ve personally been experiencing, as well as someone who is very near and dear to me. It’s crazy to think that a language we both have spoken our entire lives could possibly fail us; being unable to adequately express our thoughts and emotions with the very conduit we use to process our lives: English. I began to wonder if there were no words in any language for what we were going through. Being an emotional pioneer isn’t nearly as laudable and inspiring as being a social or a medical pioneer – being alone and paving a way for others in your own head is terrifying. One begins to wonder if they’re actually crazy – if no one else has ever felt this way in the history of humanity, why am I experiencing it?

As it turns out, there are in fact many words in other languages which describe situations and feelings that I’ve encountered but not been able to properly describe with the words I had available to me. One such word is toska, a Russian word whose working definition was written by author Vladimir Nobokov: “At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

I wish I could accurately describe how reassured and relieved I felt when I discovered this word. Toska describes how I’ve felt for most of my adolescent and adult life. The closest I could come to it in the English language in the past wasn’t even a true English word, but a French word we adopted: ennui. I finally felt like somebody somewhere understood exactly what I was going through, even if it was a someone who lived in the cold, harsh Russian steppe a thousand years ago, or however far back the word came into existence.

Confirmation of feeling is like a removal of weight from one’s shoulders. Being understood by someone – anyone – can be a tremendous comfort for a sufferer of existential or internal crises. The problem is even getting to the point where you can enunciate your feelings clearly enough to posit the issue to another person. It’s like when you were a baby; all you could do to effectively have your needs met was cry because you didn’t have the ability to use language yet. (I personally think that this is why I’ve cried as much as I have: I have trouble being able to speak how I feel or what I want to other people, and my biological default is tears). If you can’t get a grasp on how you’re feeling, you can’t express the feeling to others, which is isolating. But in turn, if you don’t have sufficient words to explain your experience, can you really figure out exactly what it is you’re feeling? There is a linguistic theory that is related to this dilemma, known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Although it’s mostly disregarded today by linguists and their kin, linguistic relativism is sort of an interesting conundrum. Benjamin Whorf (an amateur linguist for whom the second half of the theory was named after) believed that:

“We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language [...] all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.”

Obviously Whorf is flawed in his thinking; current researchers believe that language does influence thought, but in more limited ways than Whorf or his followers believed. So there are actual scientists who examine the interface between thought (or cognition) and language, and describe the degree and type of interrelatedness or influence the two have on the other. May be my concerns are not the baseless wonderings of a well-read lunatic.

And maybe it’s not even an issue of having the right words to connect to the feeling – it’s not being prepared psychologically to acknowledge the emotion. May be consciously we are so opposed or judgmental towards a concept or an idea that subconsciously we make it so that we can’t recognize it in ourselves if we begin experiencing it. May be what myself and my friend are experiencing is more psychological than it is purely emotional; I wish I knew.

As productive as it feels to ruminate on issues of linguistics and psychology, the bottom line is I don’t have many more answers than I did before I began this diatribe. All I know is, in order to give aid, you have to first identify the problem. But how can you identify a problem if you don’t have the proper tools to describe the wound? Can you? How does one find the “words” if it’s not a linguistic problem, but a psychological one?

Someone qualified needs to write a book on the subject, ASAP. I wish I could commission such a thing...