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Why one gets old by living in the past

By Ed Goldman

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,” wrote author Peter DeVries in his 1959 novel “The Tents of Wickedness.” It was a funny and poignant enough observation for the actress Simone Signoret to pilfer it to title her memoir, “Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be.” Note that a Frenchwoman used better English than an American writer. But his was funnier.

Either way, it’s an apt description of how the past can disappoint us, mainly because we expect it to be far better than the present. At various ages, we go into what I call Memory Muse Mode, a backfiring time machine that can transport us anywhere from our infancy to a few years ago. 

Nostalgia’s trigger— since everyone loves to use that word these days, as though something that causes us to think back or feel emotions needs to be viewed as a weapon—can be everything from an old song to a light breeze, an aroma or an article of clothing. Sometimes they converge and we remember the tune that was playing as the wind ruffled our hair and we smelled honeysuckle in the air while wearing a parent’s tux or dress as we drove to the prom with the windows open because we’d used too much cologne or perfume.

I’ve grown to despise nostalgia. Even as a child, seeing old photos of my parents and grandparents would make me cry. Seriously—to the point that my mom stopped showing me family albums unless I asked to see them. I can’t explain why looking at people I loved whose appearances had changed (and not even for the worse in many cases) brought on the waterworks.

What brought this up was when the other day, with a half-hour to kill before joining a Zoom call, I decided to clean up the “contacts” directory on my iPhone. What started as my simply correcting a few entries because portions of the data had changed (someone had a new email or extension, for example) soon became a purge of the names and numbers of stores that had shuttered (like a neighborhood Rite-Aid pharmacy) or, much worse, people who’d died.

I think anyone whose business or social life includes an abundance of acquaintances knows what this can feel like. 

For every half-dozen people now deceased whom I’d barely known or interviewed maybe once, possibly decades ago, I encountered an equal number of people I’d cared deeply for and apparently never had the heart to erase their names when I scrolled past them looking for someone else’s contact info.

A now-dispensable name might have been that of a beloved mentor, an old flame, a favorite mechanic or a sympathetic bartender. My directory included the number for a long-ago across-the-street neighbor I’d thought enough of to allow myself to be her contact when her medical-alert bracelet went off—which it did, often in the middle of the night, never once signaling an emergency. She simply rolled over on it in her sleep.