Forged on the Anvil of Change
Nostalgia is the weight that keeps on giving.
Nostalgia would be a catchy name for a disease, but it’s not. A disease I mean. Nostalgia is the anvil chained to our ankle as we wade into the river, our sights set firmly on the mystery of the opposing bank—our final destination.
This mighty chunk of mental metal chafes and rubs and reminds us constantly of what was and what used to be. It sinks into the soft soil of our riverbed, tugging on our leg like a toddler on our trousers. We are anchored as the giggling water flows over our skin and on and on and on. To where? That’s none of our business.
Keep your eyes on the bank.
The water won’t stop. It moves with languid yet purposeful sexiness, always flowing, always going, places to be, new ankles to tickle at. Urgent or slow, still or raging, it is constantly on the move. Onward to the sea of its unknown and thrilling destiny.
And us, here, with our anvils.
We point. We speak. We wave our back-in-my-day arms and roll the didn’t-used-to-be-this-way words in our mouths like loose coins in a tumble dryer. Our tongues are fat with it. We are the living in la-la, the making things great, the frozen in amber for all of time fossil makers.
It wasn’t great then. Or it was. It doesn’t really matter.
It’s not that it was better or worse.
It was just different.
We were different.
You were different.
Life goes on, ob-la-di, ob-la-da, etc.
Change is inevitable. Nostalgia is its keeper. It jots down notes, takes photos of the wreckage, or builds shrines to the triumphs. But this is not our temple. We’re not supposed to prostrate ourselves to worship the holiest manifestation of the Remember When times with our robes choking the flab of our memory.
It’s an OK place to visit, but we aren’t supposed to live there.
We are supposed to live here.
Now.
With change in your heart and nostalgia in the back seat, you must take firmly the wheel. Look only in your rearview when you need a reminder of its I Spy With My Little Eye games, then gently apply your foot to the accelerator so as not to jiggle it too violently as you propel yourself forward. Accept that the brake lines are cut but know that as long as your speed remains manageable, you can easily change direction.
Also, know that the face you see today is not the face of yesterday, nor will it be the face of tomorrow should you be gifted that day too.
This mirror has two faces and both of them are you. But not you. But definitely you. The freckles of your nose, the whites of your eyes, the curl of your lip, the length of your earlobes. Today is not tomorrow and your face will reinvent itself again and again, like Edison on a tear.
If nostalgia is the narrator of time, skin is the archivist of record and no amount of moisturizer will stop the cataloging.
We want to Han Solo our children in carbonite—but only on the days when they are being sweet—because this moment is an I-love-you, I-know moment and to lose it will tear your heart from its mooring. But again, the Solo who freezes today is not the same Solo who unfreezes tomorrow, and this difference is more than temporary blindness. He was frozen in carbonite against his will—he is forever changed! The action has caused the reaction, and to not see how freezing time doesn’t work is our own blindness.
The clock starts immediately. You can’t stop the clock.
And it’s not just our children, it’s our idols, too. We don’t like artists to change. It reminds us that we too are as pliant as the wind and as impermeant as a custard tart. Prince changed his name because he wanted to make a change and move to a new plateau in his life. To divorce himself from his past. But we didn’t care. He sought to break free of his anvil without realizing we would forever carry it back to him—and for him—wherever he went.
We don’t want people to reset, especially if their reset upsets our nostalgia for them. We want them to stay the same. With our longing for the past, we are again dragging our anvils. We seek out those with the same wrought-iron weights and rejoice when they clang together like some noon-time bell in a universal town square.
Why?
Patterns. We are caught in our patterns, stiff-arming change, and preventing the eraser head of environmental influence from rubbing too hard at our shape. The brocade of your taste looks fine as it is, right? The chevrons of your love are firm and immovable. Do you think your paisley makes you electable? Your fleur-de-lis, intelligent? Your patterns are overwhelming your evolution, friends, and the houndstooth of your anger makes this room seem mighty small. But you are not alone. We are all caught on the walls, papered to sameness while the peel of potential progress hints mournfully at our corners.
It can all change.
We can all change.
But only if we cease to resist.
Oh, that bruise on my arm? That’s where life tried to drag me toward change and I resisted at first, but it’s fading now. The blood that made this bruise is already being absorbed and transported to some back room. I am constantly eating myself from within, it seems. If I am constantly being rebuilt from the inside out—and not always in medically viable ways—am I still eligible for jury duty?
Whatever. I am changing. I am change. No matter if I wish it to be so, I go.
It is for the best.
I once saw an interview with writer and deep thinker, Alan Watts, where he said the following:
Life is life because it is always disappearing.
Like a disease, nostalgia is debilitating, but remember it is not a disease. It is an anvil. A great behemoth of heaviness that’s omnipresent and loud. But to see it only as an encumbering weight that pulls you to drowning is a failure of vision.
Because you can make things on anvils. Strong, powerful, beautiful things.
I say stick the metal bar in the forge, get your blacksmith’s hammer out, and make a change.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
Via Swiss Miss
On Rotation: “In My Head” by Scott Fagan
Photographer, Roeselien Raimond shoots a lot of photos of foxes, and her site has many prints you can buy of their inquisitive little faces in all sorts of locations. The face above is one of my favorites. I think. (The collection called Zen Foxes also captures the state I aspire to be in at all times.)
Faces tell all. As the photographer says:
“Foxes’ characters may differ as much as human characters. Shy and arrogant, from wallflower to cocky, chronically happy or notoriously sad. Helpful or headstrong. Mischievous and cute. Name it, and you’ll have a fox version of it.”
Read more at Colossal, or you can follow more of her nature photography on her Instagram.
Via Colossal
Nobody asked for it, and yet here we are. Croissant cereal.
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?