So I've been seeing a lot of movies lately, each one stranger and more action-packed than the last, but the movie selection all winter was so dismal you can't blame me for going to see three in one week, can you? Even at matinee prices, that's a lot of popcorn.
First we saw "Night at the Museum" (already reviewed) then "Star Trek" (enjoyed it, though I've never been a Trekkie), then "Up," the newest offering from Pixar. I've loved almost everything they've done. (Not too crazy about Ratatouille - other than the art! - or Cars, for whatever reason.) I had heard almost no press about the film and didn't know what to expect.
But I liked it. The problem is, I can't tell you anything about the premise of the movie, because that would spoil the story line, but I will say that at one point the old curmudgeon in the film (voiced by Ed Asner) lets go of all of his nostalgic artifacts from the past and frees himself to live in the now.
Which got me thinking about a statement I heard recently that really caught my attention: Nostalgia is self-destructive. I've been contemplating those words ever since and wondering if they could be true. I don't want to believe the statement is true, because I am a nostalgic/romantic person with all sorts of favorite memories, mementos, journals, photographs, letters, newspaper clippings...everything you could imagine, even an old pony tail (Well, that's really Scott's...well, I mean it's my pony tail, but it's his memento...)
I don't really want to believe that nostalgia is self-destructive, but a case could be made....All right, I think it probably is self-destructive in some ways.
I've done some research on the subject over the past couple of weeks. Cultural critic Susan Stewart said that nostalgia is "sadness that enjoys its own sadness." I don't think of nostalgia as sadness, but I do understand her meaning. She says that nostalgia is "a desire for comfort that blinds us to the urgent present." That's probably true as well.
What do I have to be so nostalgic about? Why am I thinking about this now? I think it has to do with our slowly emptying nest. (Having children over three decades and two millenia - 1989, 1991, 1995 and 2000 - makes for a very gradual but nonetheless emotionally taxing 'empty nest syndrome.' Heaven help Emily when she tries to fly the coop!)
I don't know what I can do about my tendancy toward nostalgia except try to live more in the present, savoring the here and now. That's why I loved the quote I shared last post from Jean Paul Sartre: "Mais it faut choisir: vivre our raconter" (But one must choose: to live or to remember.")
(It's interesting to note that the French philosopher Sartre started out as an avowed atheist. He actually wrote this depressing line: "Everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident." What a perspective! But after he matured he wrote: "I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God." If Sartre had ever met the missionaries, it would have been a match made (literally) in heaven.)
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