💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 329 captured on 2023-11-14 at 09:02:47. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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Saturday night.
I'm sitting alone in the main room of the house, while my wife and the kids are already sleeping. It is just me and the cat, who also sleeps by the way. But he will wake up, later during the night, and wake me up for food. That's guaranteed.
This is the time of the day where I can actually carry on some of my hobbies, although it is not always easy to enter the creative mood when I'm so tired. Unfortunately the things I'm interested in are almost never easy or relaxing, and there's a high probability of hitting some difficulties… and sitting down in despair.
Today is one of these days, so I'll hit the Pub instead. I'll have a coffee, even if it's late: caffeine has little effects on me. And a little whisky aside.
There was a time, when I was younger, when every day was similar to the other, just like these days, except I had all the time of the universe in my hands.
Back then I used to spend a lot of time in front of my computer, learning new things, chatting on IRC on a Linux-themed chatroom. In retrospective I could have learned much more than what I did, and spending less time in fruitless discussion. It was however a period of my life that I like to remember: lighthearted, with no responsibility beyond passing university exams.
What a joyful time!
I used to spend whole work-days in the premises of the university, typically studying or hacking on some yet to be finished piece of project, in between classes. Sharing a special bond with other students, sometimes teaming up on some project for a course, other times just studying together on completely different topics.
It was a time full of friends, discussions, enthusiasm and pizza. And some refreshing beer!
When the day was over, it was time to reach my room. I used to live in a flat, together with a couple of other people, although I didn't have much to share with them. I didn't have a girlfriend (how appropriate for a proud nerd!), so nights were quite lonely too.
But again, it was an easy time: I didn't feel much pressure, as I do today, of getting something done. It was OK to spend one night watching many episodes of that infinite Stargate SG1 series, and I didn't feel guilty at all.
Now life is different. I'm happy, I've got a beautiful wife, two little kids that I see growing and getting smarter every day. And a cat that keeps asking for food. I've got nothing to regret, but if I send back a message to my younger self, I'd definitely tell him to make a better use of his... my... time.
Although maybe the reason why I remember it with such a nostalgia is exactly the lack of pressure of someone who's got an infinite supply of time.
Nostalgic thoughts for me usually pertain to some project that I could not afford or did not have the knowledge to complete when I was young. Now that I am almost 50 and a little less poor I am going back and completing some of those projects. Since most of them involved electronics in some way or another they are often far easier to accomplish with modern technology than they were 20 years ago.
Nostalgia can be honeyed poison; so sweet to taste, yet you know it's probably not healthy. I suffer from this too, although "suffer" is a word probably too severe to apply to sentimental reminiscence. For a long stretch I've been doing the most peculiar things to satisfy this desire to roll back down the decades: playing music from that time, watching shows from that time, even (and I know this is going to sound odd), scouring YouTube for commercials from that time. There are entire playlists composed for people like us, hungry to return to a point where we had fewer responsibilities, more freedom, less stress.
The irony in all this is that in so doing, we may be exacerbating it. Now and again it's good to recall how good things seemed to be, but let me ask: in all your happiest memories, are you pining for the past? Are you wishing you could go backward? Nope. Probably in the memories that make you happy, you're alive, full of zeal, focused in the moment and the ebb and flow of activity. Perhaps it was trite, trivial stuff you talked about: but you were talking, engaging, fully involved in what you were doing.
We need more of this: focus, on the present moment, right now. This is actually one of the tenets of Buddhism: live in the moment. Don't fret for the future (which has not and will never come); don't yearn for the past (which is gone, you can't have it back).
It's difficult to get back into. Focusing on the present is very, very hard once you've lived long enough; the accumulation of all this emotional flotsam and jetsam colliding on the inside of our skulls is noisy. But I promise you, the best way I know to punch out of this funk, is to focus on something in the moment. It could be something sensory; take in all the little details of every crenulation of a flower's petals, trace with your eyes the spiraling patterns of wood grain on a table. Decide to do something, and do it: that's what you did when you were young, and you were happy. Taking too much time to consider and ponder over the past can retard your progress in the present.
"Who lives in the past misses the present and shall have no future."
I wish you well.