Saturday, January 24, 2026

On nostalgia...................


I have a theory about nostalgia: It happens because the best survival strategy in an uncertain world is to overworry. When you look back, you forget about all the things you worried about that never came true. So life appears better in the past because in hindsight there wasn’t as much to worry about as you were actually worrying about at the time.

-Morgan Housel, from here

Whenever the discussion turns to how good the good-old-days were, my mind turns to 1968, my junior year in high school.  Antiwar protests and riots. President Lyndon Johnson stops his reelection campaign. Martin Luther King assassination, followed by riots all over the country.  Bobby Kennedy assassinated.  It was a brutal year.  The history major in me knows that there have been many brutal years.  Not sure I am buying his theory.  Would be my guess is that nostalgia is more about missing old friends and relationships, but that's just a guess.


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