AS THE SUN paints a wonderful bright yellow glow across the sky, with chickens cooing at the rocks, paired with Kenny Rogers’ “Through the Years” reverberating through a neighbor’s loud speaker, and the sound of a walis tingting scraping through the front yard, the morning looks perfect; perhaps, as a perfect memory.
Nowadays, it seems like every cock-a-doodle-doo gives flashbacks of childhood in the province, while the waves make a sound of the younger versions of ourselves laughing with our friends and cousins as our feet splash away from jellyfish and prickly rocks. Nostalgia kicks in with our fondest memories, giving us a sentimental longing for what once was. However, it somehow feels wrong to miss our childhood at the ripe ages that start with a measly “1.” With baby faces, young features, and obvious silliness, why do we still tend to look back on our childhood even if we’re still in it?
Growing Up With the Screens
During the brazen and inescapable lockdown that we fought through five years ago, two years were spent with the familiar click-clack of a keyboard, screen-burned eyes, and thumbs gliding through bricks of glass – leading to our minds evolving to adapt to the environment around us during those times, and until now.
Shelly Pasnik Pasnik, a spokesperson and Vice President of the Education Development Center in the US, indicates that children are now constantly getting “media-delivered ideas” – content aimed at adults and viewed mostly over the internet – much sooner than previous generations. And, this exposure to more mature topics and content pertaining to social injustice, technology, marketing, politics, and the like, has shaped our minds to think about the future at such a young age.
Memories, Bring Back Memories, Bring Back You
But, what if it’s just a natural phase of growing up – to look back, to reminisce, to remember the memories that once were. Being a teenager means having a lot of hormones inside the body that activate certain feelings. As we reach the times when we slowly but surely open our glimmering eyes to the real world, nostalgia serves as a happy pill, a sweet escape from reality, even if it’s just for a short while.
These flashbacks give us a sense of security, and a warmth to come back to when life gets cold. And as adolescents, with overwhelming emotions, growing up may be tough. The melody of our favorite song from 2018, or a show that we used to wake up early in the morning to watch, or the times when we mixed our mother’s shampoo with water to create a bubble party in the bathroom, can give us something to hold on to; a compass to guide us when we get lost on our journey towards our dreams.
Despite being young, we still cling to the sights, smells, and experiences of the past, like sweet memories written in the crevices of our still-developing brains. They also teach us to get the most out of the seconds that pass by in a snap, just how Master Oogway in the 2000s favorite “Kung Fu Panda” rightfully echoes that “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”/PN
