Past/Present/Future

brown neon

Member
hello everybody!

do you feel like the best days of your life are behind you, with the memory of happier times forever threatening to landslide over your uninspiring present?

or not?

i'd be interested to hear your views....
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I suspect my nights of relatively care-free hedonism are behind me, but then so are my days of intense existential angst.

However, I try to look on the bright side - the grass is always greener, and a lot of people didn't make it this far. Frankly, there have been times in my life where if I could have seen me now, in 2008, I would have been really fucking relieved.

There are now more things which make me happy.

So, no.
 

Pestario

tell your friends
I'm relatively young so I'm probably not the best to comment but I think my best days are ahead. However, I try not to judge my days or life in terms of good/better/best or anything - just try to roll with the punches and make the best of what is actually happening.

On a related note, I read somewhere that humans have a natural tendency to omit negative memories and the degree of suppression increases as time goes on. Thus there wil always be the 'good ol' days' in people's minds.
 

swears

preppy-kei
I'm 24, and I don't think my life's gonna change much now. Shitty admin jobs 'til I'm at least 65. Although I might lose my job and become a crazy alcoholic homeless guy at some point, could be interesting. Best times 15-21.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I don't understand nostalgia- for me there are no golden memories to hide back inside. No glorious childhood, or teenage years in the light of which the adult world is some shrinking penumbra of pain and misery. Its been very much of one mode really. Though it gets a little easier the more familiar with the world one is, if anything. This is perhaps where being a miserable bastard comes in useful- if its never been good, then there is actually some cause for hope in pessimism. To live as if always in retreat from a golden age must be agonizing...? Whereas for me the past is a series of errors, to be overcome in the present, rather than some halcyon idyll the like of which I will never find again.
 

martin

----
I agree with Gek, if you could isolate the best times ever, in 1997 say, and go back to then to 'meet yourself', the old you would probably turn around and tell you it's a load of crap. People get hung up on the best times being years ago, purely because society fetishises youth - oh yeah, and this idea we're all meant to be so happy and liberated these days - woe betide he who complains about anything! Looking back, I probably met more conservative 65-year olds (mentally) at alternative / punk gigs than in old mens' pubs. And listening to white rastas talk about E is duller than a conversation about variable mortgage rates.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I don't understand nostalgia- for me there are no golden memories to hide back inside.

Surely watching Dave Morgan beat all-comers at table-football in ChCh bar while the Great Tom bell resounds across the moonlit quad outside should qualify?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't think any game will ever rule my life as completely as Doom II did when I was 14. Even when Half-Life and its sequels came along, as amazing as they were, it was more like a cerebral meeting-of-minds than the giddy adrenaline rush of adolescent obsession.

I was that game's bitch, and I loved every minute.
 
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swears

preppy-kei
I think golden ages are marked by optimism and potential. When you start thinking "This is as good as it gets", that's when things get bleak.

So I think the melancholy comes from looking back to a past where you were looking foward to a future which turned out to be a crap present.
 
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mixed_biscuits

_________________________
*shudders*

If that's your golden age I pity the fool...

We had better quality grist for the nostalgia mill at SPC, like automatic doors and an uneven croquet lawn - I remember both quite clearly and fondly.

Truly, I think you have to find pleasure in the mundane and relish its return (which is good strategically, as it will always be around). For instance, I went to achingly uncool Clacton for a solitary day out last weekend - for the umpteenth time - and had a grand time playing quiz machines, buying cds in charity shops and communicating with working class people. What's more, I managed to do all of these things unironically.

Once you start making your own buttons, it becomes easier to press them.
 
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swears

preppy-kei
Does anybody ever fantasize about going back to another age in their lives? I find myself doing this all the time, it's pretty unhealthy. "Oh, I could have done this, done that, etc..."
If I could have either a million quid or go back ten years (with the foresight I have now), I'd choose the latter. I sort of think of those years as being precious, high quality and more recent times as cheap and nasty, bargain-basement.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If I could have either a million quid or go back ten years (with the foresight I have now), I'd choose the latter. I sort of think of those years as being precious, high quality and more recent times as cheap and nasty, bargain-basement.

I assume you're not saying that simply because you know you could invest all your pocket money in Apple Computers or somesuch, or bet on the outcome of certain sports tournaments or famous people dying, in order to become a millionaire in addition to just enjoying the earlier phase of your life?

Edit: ahh, you added that bit while I was replying.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Just personal stuff, no Biff Tannen-style schemes. I wondered if this was common. To wake up and see "1999" on a calendar on a summer's morning, the last decade a bad dream, what heaven!
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
"To wake up and see "1999" on a calendar on a summer's morning, the last decade a bad dream, what heaven!"
Why would it have to be a bad dream though?
You have such a totally different outlook to me Swears.
 
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