You've beautifully captured thoughts that have been bouncing in my mind for a year now. This quote from Pascal hit me hard when I read it late 2023:
"Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live."
This was just insanely beautiful and well done. As a father of three, I consistently struggle with this idea of creating family culture. That culture needs to be defined by these waiting, delayed gratifications, connections and such. It's so hard. The culture is not changing around us, but perhaps there will be more gathered around us of like mind.
You frame the problem we face so eloquently and end on such a lovely note. I find myself in nostalgia when I search for something lost. It's looking back at my experience that doesn't have a clear answer for the future other than to respect the past. Whereas finding myself in wonder, I find my mind wanders to that which I want driven from present or past experiences. Thank you for sharing.
Northern Wisconsin small-town loving mom here - I have felt every word of this deeper and deeper and deeper over the last 10 years.
I am grateful to be raising my 4 kid crew where we are, but man, I struggle to give them more of an internet-free 80s style life. I keep looking for little ways to intentionally incorporate the joy of waiting/anticipation in our instant gratification world. I relish the moments of slow face-to-face conversation and hearing LOL happening in real life.
(Please receive the honor the knowing this is my first comment on here and it’s the closest I am to social media…only tried this place out last week after a friend shared a Holy Week writing. I also need to mention some gratitude for the online world bc somehow I did hear about Josh Nadeau and requested the Room for Good Things to Run Wild book from my library…i think they got it just for me…and squeezed it in to my Lenten ponderings - wonderful! Praise our God of incredible connections!! I pray for you from here…Cheers in Christ!)
Oh PS…I have a word I think you will want in your life…ACTAMIENTO! I do not speak Spanish but it was on repeat in my head for the last few months…double cheers!!
Oh we are just an enduring disaster - But we at least want it so it’s in mind as we try to navigate the running like idiots for sports and make efforts for grilling out and camp fires…church is priority…we try to limit tablets to traveling use (like everyone has headphones on and stays locked in silently for long drives/flights which I both love and hate 😄)
My oldest is a freshman and just got a cell phone - i think he was really the only kid in the school without one for bit there. It’s helpful but I pretty much hate it - I want my kids to have all the weird fun we had when we just sat around with friends in person coming up with random things to do to kill time…I recently heard about a nonprofit called Humanality.org that is doing cool work in this area…maybe I need to get serious about only allowing Light Phones for my kids while they live with us??? Haven’t tried those out yet though…I’m more of a complainer and contemplate-er of ideas so far (need to take more action)
Anyway, here’s a fun thing to share…bc of your post, the theme song from Full House (my favorite show to discuss with friends at elementary lunch time when I was a kid) popped in my head over morning coffee today…listen to those lyrics!!!
- I used to think it said “A LION is waiting to carry you home” and that would have really made it amazing for you 😄
And there you go…the reason I can’t be on these platforms😂
I’ve spent the past month mentally revisiting the early 90s, after learning that 2 years ago a close friend that I had lost touch with died by his own hand. Looking at photos from high school, I was blindsided by grief as I realized how happy and carefree we looked. I’ve had to remind myself of the words of Ecclesiastes, which says it is not wisdom to say, “the old days were better than these”. My friend died alone and scared and that has broken my heart. This essay and especially the Lewis quote were a moment of comfort in this wilderness of sadness. Thank you.
I feel that nostalgia but mostly for the earlier years, before middle school. It all felt more simple and predictable in a good way then. I tried to create some version of that for my son which worked pretty well until his dad left. We still tried after that, but something was lost.
We want our kids to have that safe cocoon where they can thrive and dream. I know people who are still doing that for their kids now, mostly homeschoolers which we are too.
I suspect it's partly the age thing--we feel that nostalgia for an easier time--and partly the era and the technology today that are different. We know too much about things we don't need to know. Our pastor has talked about how our best lives, if we use the New Testament believers as examples, should probably have an intensely local scope. The encouragement and teaching in the NT don't generally come with the idea that we will have information about and/or contact with hundreds, thousands, or millions of people and ideas like we do now. It teaches about personal interactions and relationships instead, simpler and more local. Maybe one reason is that despite everything being available to the ends of the earth, we're not made for that much "contact" and information. We're made for family, children, church, in-person community, recreation, beauty, work. I think maybe if we focused more in those directions, we might have more nostalgia and pleasure to look back on even as we get older.
Right? Here I am, reading of and writing to people far away. I think there's value in being able to connect with like-minded people who may be far away, but like many others, I have trouble closing the lid, as you said. It's harder to be in community with people in person as often as with people online. However, adjusting the percentages is pretty healthy for me, and probably for many others.
Adam and Eve were to dwell in the garden. Because of their actions, they were cast out. The generations behind them will not experience Eden in this lifetime. So it went with the “90’s kids”. The generations before gave them a paradise to grow up in, but they wanted that forbidden fruit. Now instead of building a new garden, they sit around and talk about that which can never return.
Man, I feel this so deeply. I remember watching 24 with my parents and then talking about it the next day before language arts class—like it was part of the curriculum. Trips to Blockbuster were a whole event, and somehow even that slow walk through the aisles felt sacred.
My mom was that mom in the neighborhood—the one who’d call out older kids for cussing around us, who’d rebuke them like they were her own. She expected better from them, and most of them respected her for it… eventually. But not before they built a tree fort and spray-painted “No Sam’s Mom” on the side in protest. I still laugh thinking about it.
Now? We don’t even know the kids two houses down—let alone their parents. Something about all of this makes me ache, but it also makes me want to be present again. To rebuild that kind of neighborliness. To let our homes be gathering places again. Thanks for putting words to the ache and the invitation.
Nostalgia is fun to indulge in now amd again, but when understanding history it is almost always distortive. When we create false pictures of the past we do not do justice and relate properly to the past, our present, and potential futures. The temptation to either hero worship or chronological snobbery prevents us from rightly appreciating past epochs and a richer perspeption of them with the good and bad features of those times.
When we do understand different times and places based on the evidence and not projecting our wishes or ideology and fully confront the true nature of a time, warts and all, we can then move past that to honestly appraise good thinga about that time and in some cases what fearures we can try to emulate in our own time.
Most nostalgia for me is fond memories of being in late middle school, going home on the bus in a summer afternoon, walking over to the 711, and going home to play COD zombies. No romanticism about it beong a better time, temptations like that will only come later, but I hope I am historically aware and reflective enoigh to not fall into those types of pathologies.
I also think being born in 1999 is a part of that. I saw the tale end of the reletivlty and exceptiobally peaceful and stable of the post-1989 world order. By 2014 I knew that the edifices my predesors (in a more generic sense) created will be torn down before my very eyes.
What a lovely sentiment here. Resonated very deeply with me. I’ve had similar thoughts to these. There’s definitely a balance between indulging nostalgic thoughts and trying to reincorporate what we remember/ seem to have lost into the present. For ourselves, for our children, for our neighbors. Nostalgia is necessary; not just to overwrite the negatives, but because it enhances the value we place on the things that were good, the positives. And as you note here, it reminds us in a way of what it’s like to have childlike wonder and awe. It’s a similar phenomenon caused by beauty and why beauty and art are so important. Few things these days inspire that, and our world needs it now more than ever. Well said and thank you for your writing🙏🏻.
You've beautifully captured thoughts that have been bouncing in my mind for a year now. This quote from Pascal hit me hard when I read it late 2023:
"Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live."
YES
This was just insanely beautiful and well done. As a father of three, I consistently struggle with this idea of creating family culture. That culture needs to be defined by these waiting, delayed gratifications, connections and such. It's so hard. The culture is not changing around us, but perhaps there will be more gathered around us of like mind.
You’re right - it is hard to do - but I think we do it small, together. And I think it can change.
“If you were lucky, you had a tape in the deck — and you’d run to hit record.
You could catch it, you could hold it, and you could listen again.”
Beautifully put. I love the way you make it sound like catching lightning. Like giving embodiment to something intangible. Magical.
Truly. It was. I remember holding my music in my hands. What a time.
You frame the problem we face so eloquently and end on such a lovely note. I find myself in nostalgia when I search for something lost. It's looking back at my experience that doesn't have a clear answer for the future other than to respect the past. Whereas finding myself in wonder, I find my mind wanders to that which I want driven from present or past experiences. Thank you for sharing.
Northern Wisconsin small-town loving mom here - I have felt every word of this deeper and deeper and deeper over the last 10 years.
I am grateful to be raising my 4 kid crew where we are, but man, I struggle to give them more of an internet-free 80s style life. I keep looking for little ways to intentionally incorporate the joy of waiting/anticipation in our instant gratification world. I relish the moments of slow face-to-face conversation and hearing LOL happening in real life.
(Please receive the honor the knowing this is my first comment on here and it’s the closest I am to social media…only tried this place out last week after a friend shared a Holy Week writing. I also need to mention some gratitude for the online world bc somehow I did hear about Josh Nadeau and requested the Room for Good Things to Run Wild book from my library…i think they got it just for me…and squeezed it in to my Lenten ponderings - wonderful! Praise our God of incredible connections!! I pray for you from here…Cheers in Christ!)
Oh PS…I have a word I think you will want in your life…ACTAMIENTO! I do not speak Spanish but it was on repeat in my head for the last few months…double cheers!!
i am truly honoured I snagged your first comment - and very honoured you'd read my book ! truly
you have any ways you've implemented this ? that 80s / 90s slowness for the family >?
Oh we are just an enduring disaster - But we at least want it so it’s in mind as we try to navigate the running like idiots for sports and make efforts for grilling out and camp fires…church is priority…we try to limit tablets to traveling use (like everyone has headphones on and stays locked in silently for long drives/flights which I both love and hate 😄)
My oldest is a freshman and just got a cell phone - i think he was really the only kid in the school without one for bit there. It’s helpful but I pretty much hate it - I want my kids to have all the weird fun we had when we just sat around with friends in person coming up with random things to do to kill time…I recently heard about a nonprofit called Humanality.org that is doing cool work in this area…maybe I need to get serious about only allowing Light Phones for my kids while they live with us??? Haven’t tried those out yet though…I’m more of a complainer and contemplate-er of ideas so far (need to take more action)
Anyway, here’s a fun thing to share…bc of your post, the theme song from Full House (my favorite show to discuss with friends at elementary lunch time when I was a kid) popped in my head over morning coffee today…listen to those lyrics!!!
- I used to think it said “A LION is waiting to carry you home” and that would have really made it amazing for you 😄
And there you go…the reason I can’t be on these platforms😂
Oh my goodness, Josh.
This is brilliant. Just beautiful!
thanks, Erika !
truly
I’ve spent the past month mentally revisiting the early 90s, after learning that 2 years ago a close friend that I had lost touch with died by his own hand. Looking at photos from high school, I was blindsided by grief as I realized how happy and carefree we looked. I’ve had to remind myself of the words of Ecclesiastes, which says it is not wisdom to say, “the old days were better than these”. My friend died alone and scared and that has broken my heart. This essay and especially the Lewis quote were a moment of comfort in this wilderness of sadness. Thank you.
im so sorry for your loss, friend
and yeah, it's wisdom to not get lost in the path -- and also wisdom to learn from it
praying the best for you
I feel that nostalgia but mostly for the earlier years, before middle school. It all felt more simple and predictable in a good way then. I tried to create some version of that for my son which worked pretty well until his dad left. We still tried after that, but something was lost.
We want our kids to have that safe cocoon where they can thrive and dream. I know people who are still doing that for their kids now, mostly homeschoolers which we are too.
I suspect it's partly the age thing--we feel that nostalgia for an easier time--and partly the era and the technology today that are different. We know too much about things we don't need to know. Our pastor has talked about how our best lives, if we use the New Testament believers as examples, should probably have an intensely local scope. The encouragement and teaching in the NT don't generally come with the idea that we will have information about and/or contact with hundreds, thousands, or millions of people and ideas like we do now. It teaches about personal interactions and relationships instead, simpler and more local. Maybe one reason is that despite everything being available to the ends of the earth, we're not made for that much "contact" and information. We're made for family, children, church, in-person community, recreation, beauty, work. I think maybe if we focused more in those directions, we might have more nostalgia and pleasure to look back on even as we get older.
I agree - made for that local scope - and it's hard to close the lid on "knowing everything" - being connected, but i think it really matters
Right? Here I am, reading of and writing to people far away. I think there's value in being able to connect with like-minded people who may be far away, but like many others, I have trouble closing the lid, as you said. It's harder to be in community with people in person as often as with people online. However, adjusting the percentages is pretty healthy for me, and probably for many others.
Adam and Eve were to dwell in the garden. Because of their actions, they were cast out. The generations behind them will not experience Eden in this lifetime. So it went with the “90’s kids”. The generations before gave them a paradise to grow up in, but they wanted that forbidden fruit. Now instead of building a new garden, they sit around and talk about that which can never return.
we can't time travel, that's for sure - but we should be building new gardens, like you said - and in part, that means looking back
Man, I feel this so deeply. I remember watching 24 with my parents and then talking about it the next day before language arts class—like it was part of the curriculum. Trips to Blockbuster were a whole event, and somehow even that slow walk through the aisles felt sacred.
My mom was that mom in the neighborhood—the one who’d call out older kids for cussing around us, who’d rebuke them like they were her own. She expected better from them, and most of them respected her for it… eventually. But not before they built a tree fort and spray-painted “No Sam’s Mom” on the side in protest. I still laugh thinking about it.
Now? We don’t even know the kids two houses down—let alone their parents. Something about all of this makes me ache, but it also makes me want to be present again. To rebuild that kind of neighborliness. To let our homes be gathering places again. Thanks for putting words to the ache and the invitation.
AHAH man i love that
and then, because i love those memories, it makes me sad how far things have gotten
Nostalgia is fun to indulge in now amd again, but when understanding history it is almost always distortive. When we create false pictures of the past we do not do justice and relate properly to the past, our present, and potential futures. The temptation to either hero worship or chronological snobbery prevents us from rightly appreciating past epochs and a richer perspeption of them with the good and bad features of those times.
When we do understand different times and places based on the evidence and not projecting our wishes or ideology and fully confront the true nature of a time, warts and all, we can then move past that to honestly appraise good thinga about that time and in some cases what fearures we can try to emulate in our own time.
Most nostalgia for me is fond memories of being in late middle school, going home on the bus in a summer afternoon, walking over to the 711, and going home to play COD zombies. No romanticism about it beong a better time, temptations like that will only come later, but I hope I am historically aware and reflective enoigh to not fall into those types of pathologies.
I also think being born in 1999 is a part of that. I saw the tale end of the reletivlty and exceptiobally peaceful and stable of the post-1989 world order. By 2014 I knew that the edifices my predesors (in a more generic sense) created will be torn down before my very eyes.
What a lovely sentiment here. Resonated very deeply with me. I’ve had similar thoughts to these. There’s definitely a balance between indulging nostalgic thoughts and trying to reincorporate what we remember/ seem to have lost into the present. For ourselves, for our children, for our neighbors. Nostalgia is necessary; not just to overwrite the negatives, but because it enhances the value we place on the things that were good, the positives. And as you note here, it reminds us in a way of what it’s like to have childlike wonder and awe. It’s a similar phenomenon caused by beauty and why beauty and art are so important. Few things these days inspire that, and our world needs it now more than ever. Well said and thank you for your writing🙏🏻.