Nostalgia

Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means "the pain from an old wound." It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel, it's called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved. 

-Mad Men, Season 1 Episode 13

So I think I have written about homesickness already. And if not, it's not necessarily because I don't feel it. I have actually been fairly homesick lately, though the interwebiverse serves as a good mitigator of that mess. Still, it's a weird feeling to know that the world keeps turning without you around. Life events happen whether we are there to observe them or not, and that point was unexpectedly driven home yesterday with the news of two of my college friends' engagement (PS congrats, losers. Have fun being shackled together for the rest of eternity).

But that's not really what prompted this entry (I've been working it out mentally for about a week now), and that's not really the kind of homesickness I'm talking about. Of course I do miss specific people, places, and things (BUT NOT IDEAS! NEVER IDEAS!), but what I think I've been missing more is the sense of comfort and security from knowing that we are in a place we can call "home". 

See, we (and I say "we" because I am pretty sure most of my readers grew up like I did in safe, relatively secure families who for the most part provided well for us) grew up with a distinct sense of security. Most of us had families who loved us, and provided for us. Even though there was turmoil in our lives, it was relatively minor - our entire lives/livelihoods/families were not destroyed by acts of nature or war; nor did we have to actively fight for our own survival on the mean streets of Rotterdam or something (twenty five points to whomever gets that reference). 

So we grow up in this relatively easy way until we take the next natural step and leave the nest. (Again, for most of the people reading this) that next step was college - which leads into this horrible, seemingly-interminable phase called Transitioning To Adulthood. In college, we are surrounded by our peers. And while for me it involved moving EVERY GODDAMN SUMMER, it was still a relatively stable place. I knew that I would be coming back at the end of every summer to (mostly) the same people in (mostly) the same place. 

But after graduation, all that changed. I wouldn't actually move again for another three months, but I immediately lost any secure sense of place. Yes, I still had my friends and family supporting me, and yes, I still had a place to live, but as a consequence of being underemployed, I always felt this constant struggle to settle down into a comfortable rhythm, so I could start building stability. And even then, I felt like I was in a holding pattern before I went off to grad school. And now I'm here in Korea, again without a stable, comfortable sense of place following two enormous moves in six months, bringing the total number of moves I've made since 2004 to 10. It creates this sense that I am, in some way, out of sync with the world around me. An outsider looking in on all these people's real lives.

And I don't think this is unique to me. One of my friends calls it the second puberty, and I think that's particularly apt. It's a growing pain, emblematic of all 20-somethings (a barf term, I know) who are really only just now starting to figure out who the hell they are.We stumble through, figuring out what it is we want out of life. And not just the nice car or the big house, but that singular driving force that will push us forward. I think the Olds call this "youthful idealism". I call it a necessary part of growing up.

So what does this have to do with nostalgia and homesickness? It's like Don Draper says - nostalgia is a twinge in your heart more powerful than memory alone. To paraphrase, it is a desire, a longing to go back home. Maybe not "home" in some specific sense - I'm not desperate to move back to Katy, TX or even the USA for that matter. But what I - and what I think EVERYONE my age is looking for - is that stability, that comfort, that sense of belonging to a place that we had when we were kids. And it's not going to go away just yet, because it's not just a place we can pack up and move to (I've clearly tried). It's a place we all have to build, in our own ways. We build it with our community, we build it with our careers, but most of all, we build it just by living our lives. So keep on living - one day, perhaps one, five, ten years from now, we'll wake up living and realize we are, in fact, home.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy, morose post. Here is a funny video to lighten the mood!