Do we ever pause to contemplate the construction of nostalgia? To drink in the little details of daily life? The insipid meanderings of routines, the placement of a jacket upon a bedpost, the smattering of jewelry tossed carelessly upon a bureau? This is the same house, the same bedroom, I have had for most of my life. The position of the closet and the view from my window has been the same for fourteen years. And yet, the furniture and objects contained inside of these walls is barely the same at all. To see what this room, this entire house, looked like fourteen years ago would be an unfathomable gift, a reversion straight back to childhood when responsibilities were nonexistent and everything in life was a game. And yet, back then it was nothing extraordinary, it was simply my room with my things and my life was ordinary and unremarkable. It is curious to think of how time adds value, both to literal and figurative embodiments. Mundane items can accumulate exponential wealth by becoming antiques, just as memories from two weeks ago may not seem significant although ten years from now they would remind you of a completely different life. It is still you and yet so much of what you surround yourself with and the person you have in fact become would be very different from who you were at that point in time. And still, it is a race to the finish, the preoccupation with what lies ahead often preventing us from appreciating the here and now. Perhaps as children we can be excused for this oversight, our minds not fully able to grasp complex concepts and feelings, however, as adults we cannot afford such a luxury. Life is truly a journey; there is no concrete destination. The memories we create allow for a mental catalog of this passage, and it is through those nuanced details (a smell, a touch, a sound) that we are allowed to preserve a feeling characterized by a time and a place. It is the medium by which we are permitted to remember ourselves.
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