Reminiscing is America’s favorite pastime. Romanticizing about times foreign to us, it seems we’re perpetually nostalgic for days gone past. Perhaps I am young, but it feels like now more than ever, we yearn for what we conceptualize as the better time — days when life seemed ever more pure and more vibrant.
I sat with a cohort at Northwest Dining hall the other day, and over a feast of grilled cheese and pasta, we recounted our escapades, or lack thereof, during the 2020 quarantine caused by the pandemic. While we conversed, we did little complaining and scrutinizing of that time, but reveled in the era in which we were confined to the borders of our backyard and spent our fleeting youth recording videos for online gym classes, binging “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and building castles within the friend group Minecraft Realm. Those “two weeks off of school” (which turned out to be a solid year and change), were some of the most glorious days of our lives, and this is strange because really (to nobody’s surprise) the pandemic was a horrific time. Masses died, hospitals became menageries, and the world ceased to work. Why does our generation look at this time with rose tinted glasses?
Photo courtesy of CharlesMC on YouTube
For the constituents of my generation (Generation Z), life seemed far simpler. Blinded by our own juvenilia, we were not the ones dealing with a failing economy, panic buying and the health of our family members. The most challenging thing to do on a daily basis was pick the weeds out of our Animal Crossing Island and show up for a Zoom homeroom. For the young adult audience reading this article, life has literally only gotten faster and harder since quarantine let out, so it is natural that we look back on the time more fondly.
During the pandemic, the United States government was almost forcefully overthrown, and this only opened the doors for higher political tension of a more vulgar and unchivalrous extreme. Yet, quarantined, the young adults of today lived in their own bubble. We had our own curated realm of reality, and so despite all the turmoil, we rode our bikes up and down the street and watched YouTube late into the night. This was our time to be pure, authentic children, having an “American summer” which lasted a little longer than expected.
The end of the pandemic, thus, felt like the harsh and impromptu cut-off of this generation’s childhood and we were quickly thrust into a world far too complex for our liking. In the words of Leon Bridges, “The world leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.” We miss a world that is undemanding.
As mentioned earlier, looking back on far more challenging times as far simpler times is as American as fast food and Ford F-150s. Many grandparents will speak so highly of their youth that was free of technology and “the damn phone,” yet will neglect that the world was as close as it ever was to blowing up and simple mass-produced medicine like penicillin wasn’t even 20 years old.
When we let our fantasizing about the past blind any forward progress of our own lives is when it becomes dangerous. Being unable to move on as a person because of a belief that times were better before is harmful to ourselves. Similarly, when political parties who believe that “traditional American values” need to be enforced like they were 70 years ago, we cannot progress as a nation.
Still, to relive those juvenile days would be priceless. I was corny, yet I was genuine. Perhaps our amount of reminiscing is an indicator of how joyful our world is. The more we think the present is inadequate, the more we seek out the past.
Within all of the contemporary chaos, some overcorrection is bound to happen. We can already see it. Independent musicians and artists are starting to blow up the music charts as people enjoy the raw, unique (as opposed to corporate) sounds that rang through the halls of TikTok back in its early days. There are movements across the internet to disband from AI generated memes (“slop” as it is called) and start creating or reposting human-made media. Although the internet was full of garbage back in 2020, it is so bad today that even the young adults, brain rotted and attentionless, are understanding the absurdity of it all. We’ve hit rock bottom and the only way to get better is to go back up.
When done too often, a romanization of the past can be harmful to our wellbeing. But when used to compare to the present, and see where we, as a species, went astray, it can be so useful for reverting us to a timeline in which things seem logical. The past and the era of quarantine was a scary time, but a learning experience nonetheless. We look back fondly to relive, but more so we can recreate.