Nostalgia Is Dangerous

Nostalgia Is Dangerous When I traveled back to Dayton, Ohio, last month, on a quick break from tour, I felt revived by waves of nostalgia as I maneuvered through my hometown. Walking the downtown streets amid towering buildings glimmering in the summer sun. Driving the outskirts of town through cornfields so green they appeared radioactive. Passing my childhood home, inhaling the memories of adolescence. But theres a problem with nostalgia: it tells only half-truths. And thus the full truth isnt as fragrant as my wistful reminiscence. Most of those skyscrapers are abandoned. The cornfields are subsumed by cookie-cutter suburbia. And the house that raised me is boarded up after decades of disrepair. Nostalgia is a rose-colored rearview. Not only does it falsely represent the past, keeping us clinging to a two-dimensional version of life that didnt actually exist, it dampens the present and clouds the future. If we want things to be the way they were, or if we hope to make something great again, then were missing out on how good this moment is, and how great the future can be. Dont get me wrong, I still love my hometownâ€"not for what it used to be, but for what it is right now, and for what its future holds. Subscribe to The Minimalists via email.