Ruminations
I got a little worried the other day when Isabel bought one of those film listerine thingies and offered some to us. She and XY both felt that it is a very nostalgic item.
"No!" I exclaimed. "How is this nostalgic???" I was very sure that it was not nostalgic because, well, nostalgic is the 70's, or 80's. Not the 2000's! And, more to the point, I'm not that old!
Haha. A few moments ago I realised that actually, I am.
At the risk of making this post sound like another one of those cliche quarter-life-crisis types, I shall elaborate.
It dawned on me that since I know how nostalgia feels like, I'm probably old. To me, nostalgia is:
- The Backstreet Boys
- Songs like Blue's "If You Come Back"
- My secondary school uniform
- Daily homework
- Spending the first half-hour in school copying the above
- (gasp) Poly days and the happiness that they were full of
...and so on. And you can only call it nostalgia when any one of the above things has the following effect on you: a smile spreads slowly over your face, and you get this faraway look in your eyes. And to further prove that you're well on the way to senior citizenhood, you would say "Ah...those were the days."
Along with all the boyband songs that bring me back to the "good ol' days" comes a rather harmless-looking but actually slow-killing by-product - belief in the lyrics of said songs.
Specifically, words like "forever", "end of time", "endless", "never die", "unchanging" may seem pretty innocent on their own. But. Juxtaposed with the magic (of the dark variety, o'course) lexicon "love". They can be your ticket to endless, forever unchanging scenery of hellfire till the end of time.
Plunge into a relationship believing all these things, and you will probably not come out unscathed. If you do/did, congratulations (but your story probably hasn't ended yet =p).
Of course, old habits die hard and so do old beliefs. So we hold on to every shred of "evidence" that possibly shows that the above words are not lies. That they do exist in some form, in some people's stories.
On the other hand, if you totally deny the existence of this concept, you might not be happy either. Whether or not you're in a relationship. But that's life, huh. And that's happiness. Everyone else has their own definition, and it's too gaseous to grab hold of or identify until all that's left is a whiff, or wisps, of a memory.
During a recent self-evaluation, I discovered that no matter what I always say or think I believe, I actually never condemned the accused words to the label of "utter liars". Maybe I've read too many novels and watched too many rom-coms to really give up on the defendants. I may make damning cases about their guilt, but in my heart I still hope for them to be able to walk.
So now I've come up with another item to add on my nostalgia item list - fervent belief in boyband song lyrics. Because years of hearing other people's stories and a little bit of personal experience has thought me not to look for a fairytale life, but to find the stardust in everyday things. Like maybe...instead of finding a prince charming on a white horse, get a guy who has a white (platinum) card. 无鱼、肉也好.
Haha, just kidding of course. Material goods will get you nothing but very short-lived happiness. Now, spiritual food is another thing. So now I no longer wish for a prince charming, but just someone who makes me feel like we are fated to be together, who reciprocates, who shares some of my innermost thoughts. And lately I've been thinking...someone who inspires and whom I inspire. A muse. Now wouldn't that be nice.
