Psychological Stoicism Part 3: Future Nostalgia

This series of posts is not meant to be a comprehensive course on Stoic theory and practice. Instead, it offers small strategies that can assist you in maintaining tranquillity and guiding you in the right direction during stressful and difficult times. Click here for an introduction to this series of posts on psychological Stoicism.

An audio version of this post will be available soon.

The Alien Life

As a young adult in the late 1980s, I was very anxious and lacking self-belief. I was always looking for ways to help fix my confidence issues, but information that could help was hard to find back then in those pre-internet days. I would often pore over the bookshelves in my local library or branch of WH Smiths, looking for books that could help. So, it was unsurprising that I was entranced by a BBC programme on how to build confidence. Having watched the episode, I sent away for a booklet that accompanied the show and worked through every exercise. I can’t remember much about most of the exercises, but one really stood out, and I still clearly remember it because it fed into my love of science fiction and time travel. 

In this activity, you had to pretend you were an alien who had just arrived on Earth and go undetected by jumping into the body of a human. This human could be modelled on a real or an imaginary person, and you could choose any type of human personality you wanted. Then, you would choose a specific situation you were anxious about, jump into the body of this person, and then act in the way that you thought they would. Of course, this exercise was really about changing your mindset and discovering what it was like to act more confidently in difficult or challenging situations. In this post, I also want to suggest taking a mental jump into the body or mindset of another person, but in this case, it is your future self jumping into your present self. Confused? Keep on reading.

Returning to the Dream Life

In an earlier post in this series, I suggested that you are living the dream life, but the dream in question was being had by someone else. Maybe a person from an impoverished region of the world, a terminally ill neighbour, or a distant long-gone relative. However, the lives we dream of living often belong to someone else, and as a result, we find ourselves dissatisfied with our lives.  

I’d like to give another perspective on the dream life. Even though it seems unlikely, I’d like you to consider the likelihood that one of the people who dreams of living the life that you are currently living is not some other person, but it's you, yourself. Not the current you but a future you. I’m suggesting that even though you might be dissatisfied with the life you're currently living. Even though you might hate that life. There's a good chance at some point in the future, you will look back at this period of your life longingly. Future you will think, if only I could live the life I lived back then. This is a way of thinking nostalgically about the present.

The Power of Nostalgia

Nearly all of us occasionally think if only we could be living the life we once lived. If only we could go back in time to relive certain moments or periods of time. Sometimes, we can be hit by a bout of nostalgia after hearing a particular song or looking at an old photograph. It often doesn’t take much to experience a wave of yearning for past times. You will again inhabit the life of the earlier you with its familiar faces and spaces and with all its trials and delights. This flashback will likely be accompanied by a delicious but bittersweet stew of emotions. I'm prone to nostalgia about my childhood, my adolescence, and the early days of fatherhood.

I sometimes think back to the time when I was a mature student. I thought I had it quite tough at the time. I was in my early 30s with a son only months old. Everything seemed like a rush. I would get up early when my wife and son were still sleeping and go for a run. I really wanted to stay in bed, but I’d force myself to run around the park as, due to a medical condition, I needed to stay fit and keep my blood pressure down. When I arrived home, my wife would be getting ready for work and hand over all parent duties to me. I’d feed my son, get him dressed, take him to my mother-in-law’s house and then hop onto the train to the university. 

When classes for the day were finished and the other students - all younger and without responsibilities - went on to socialise, go home for a nap, or do some extra studying, I’d be rushing off to the train station to get home to collect my son before his grandmother needed to leave for her job. The rest of the day was spent playing with and feeding my son, walking around the park with the buggy and preparing dinner for when my wife came home from work. This was followed by bathtime, bedtime and tidy-up time. Then, I would have an hour or so to catch up on my university work before crawling into bed, ready to repeat it all the next day. I remember that I often longed for that period of my life to be over when I would have more time and independence. I thought life would really begin when my studies were finished, I’d have a paid job and everything wouldn’t be such a rush. 

Fast forward to the current time, and I look back on those days very differently. Oh, I could run around the park in the morning, completing 5 kilometres in under 25 minutes without my knees aching! My son was a beautiful, bonny baby who would smile whenever he saw me, and I could kiss his soft, warm baby head! I could sit in class with young, interesting people from all over the world and learn from committed and enthusiastic experts! On the train journeys, I enjoyed a coffee as we trundled over the River Tyne, which had a beautiful view of the bridges of Newcastle! I didn’t have the demands or responsibilities of paid work and instead spent my time learning and writing about new and interesting theories that excited me! I could sleep for 5 or 6 hours, bounce out of bed and have the energy to do it day after day! In the words of Bruce Springsteen, these were ‘Glory days’ and ‘they’ll pass you by in the wink of a young girl's eye.’

Of course, many of those times were also filled with awkwardness, loneliness, and the insecurity of adolescence. This means that rather than savouring the life I was living, I dreamt of literally growing out of that life. Surely, the life of a grown adult was preferable to the life I was living? Now, flash forward to the present me. One of the recreational activities I love is running. I particularly love running early in the morning, the feeling of moving in the open air, and noticing as my body warms up, no matter how cold the weather is. Seeing the trees, smelling the grass, hearing the birds. I feel even better after I have finished running. I have a great sense of achievement as my body and brain buzz with the runner’s high.   

Now, flash forward into the future. If I live long enough, there will likely come a time when running is no longer an option. Indeed, maybe I’ll be in a nursing home. As the other residents sit in the common room watching old movies, I will sit with my eyes closed, dreaming about my time running in the early mornings. Earlier this year, I got a taste of that existence, but it wasn't because I was sitting in a nursing home. It was instead because a physiotherapist told me that I had developed a knee ligament injury. It made it painful for me to run more than a few steps and just as painful to walk down the stairs first thing in the morning. “How long will I need to stop?” I asked the physio. “About six to nine months of knee exercises and complete rest from running”, she replied. Fortunately, I am now back running, but the time I spent off made me realise just how vital that slow jog around the park is to me, as well as the extent to which I had come to take that part of my life for granted. In order to lessen the chance that I will again start taking it for granted while running in the park, I periodically remind myself that this might be my last run ever. Meaning that I should savour it. 

The Exercise - Future Nostalgia

In the Quantum Leap meditation I described in an earlier post, you imagine that you are living the life of someone who dreams of living the life that you are living. In the remainder of this post, I will describe a modified version of this meditation. I refer to it as future nostalgia. I know it is the same name as a Dua Lipa album, but I honestly came up with the term years before her album was released. Don’t worry, I am not planning on suing her. The term perfectly describes the meditation in question. You think back to an earlier time, but you do so from a future perspective so that the time you are thinking back to is the present moment. You treat current events as if they were a cherished memory. In other words, you experience a kind of nostalgia, not about the past, but about the here and now.

I routinely do a future nostalgia exercise. When I have to mow the lawn, pushing around the noisy mower on a hot summer day, with my dog barking at the noise from the kitchen, feels like a chore. However, I found that I can make the task a little more agreeable by pausing to reflect on the fact that should I live long enough, the time will come when I will wish that I could be young and strong enough to mow the lawn. Right now, mowing is no fun, but there is an excellent chance that someday I will look back on it as a key activity of the good old days.

In my encounters with younger people, I sometimes find it tempting to nudge them toward future nostalgia. When, for example, I encounter a 16-year-old boy, it's tempting to tell him to enjoy being 16 because it isn't going to last. I refrain from doing this, as the effort would likely be wasted. I know that when I was a 16-year-old if some old codger had told me to enjoy it because it wasn't going to last, I would simply have written it off as old man talk. It is the same as kids constantly being told that their school days are the best days of their lives. They just don’t believe it. So, I save my advice for those mature enough, primarily those over 40. Recently, the target of one of these nuggets of advice was a man on the occasion of his 40th birthday. “Enjoy being 40,” I said, “because it's not going to last.” He laughed, but I wasn’t joking. It was intended as sincere advice from a man nearly 15 years older. I recently came across this article, in which a woman in her 90s looked back on how young she really was in her 60s and 70s and wished she had realised that at the time. Despite being a lot younger than her, I can understand her perspective. 

Social Future Nostalgia

I have been experimenting with a social version of future nostalgia, inviting another person to join me in thinking nostalgically about the present. When walking my dog, I sometimes bump into another dog walker who has been walking similar routes to me for years. One hot and sunny day, when we were walking, very suddenly dark clouds blew in, and we found ourselves sheltering under a huge tree in a torrential downpour. The power of the rain in the heat of what was before a beautiful summer’s day was quite an experience. As we walked back home I started telling him the story of the very walk we were on. “Remember that time when we were on a dog walk on a beautiful, hot, sunny day, and the rain came from nowhere? It was torrential, and we sheltered under a huge tree, which kept us dry. Even the dogs sat still in amazement. Remember how it suddenly stopped as quickly as it started, and the sun came back out, the heat rose, the puddles quickly dried up, the birds were singing again, and it was as if the sudden rain never happened? That was a good day. That was a great life-affirming experience.” Heavy rain when out walking can be a disappointing experience, but future nostalgia has the power to transform it into an event with special meaning.

These are the Good Days

I recently saw a social media post by the British mathematician and television presenter Hannah Fry. She described how she started to feel happier when she appreciated that the present moments she is living in are the good days and how she now often says to herself, “These are the good days!” I think Hannah is right. These quite likely are the good old days, and there's a very good chance that you will someday dream of living the life that you are living right now despite its shortcomings. So live these days to the fullest, my friend. These are the good days, these are the best days, these are great days.