A Future in the Past

Is it too late to say ‘Happy New Year’? Hard to believe it’s already month into Two Thousand and ELEVEN. What’s harder to believe is that it’s over a decade into the dazzling new millennium! The future is here.. and I sometimes have a hard time catching up to it.

In my mind, where I spend most of my time and am the best of who I am, I’m often imagining being back in time. The 1960’s. The 50’s. The 40’s. I grew up partly in an environment like those eras. I was close to my grandparents, and my mom raised me in such a ‘vintage’ way- we listened to vinyl, watched black and white TV, ate things from the garden, played ‘simple’ games, and wore dresses on Sunday.

I was never as contemporary as the other kids my age, but it’s never bothered me. I’m happy to have the ways of ‘days gone by’ instilled in me like I do. I feel like it’s better taught me to use my imagination, and to get more joy out of life’s ‘little things’. Right from the start I learned good manners, the difference between right and wrong, to think for myself, and the importance of love and respect for people and things- whether you always ‘like’ them or not.

Now I don’t always think and feel so squeaky clean like the ‘nifty fifties’, or act freely creative like the hippie days. Because in actuality, I’m growing up in America from the 1980’s to the present- and times have changed. There is a side of me that can’t help but be more modern, it’s a reality of time I can’t change. I do feel blessed with the 21st century at times- the opportunities, the technology, the convenience of life now. But when I see other happenings around me, the negative actions and events that seem to keep adding up in the world of today, it makes me just want to get zapped into the ‘Pleasantville past’ via The Twilight Zone..

*Sometimes I wish more than anything to be able to jump into old-timey-TV..

I’ve been watching so many classic films and buying records and soaking my life in the past lately, that it’s really been helping my thoughts for the future. I listen to music from back then, still SO true. Songs written 30 years before I was born can exactly describe situations I face now.. and like music does in general- it helps me feel better. I watch my favorite actors, immortalized on screen as they were years ago, and then see them in real life nowdays- and it’s like a sped-up view of their life. (which was crazy for me growing up- living in that fantasy world of hanging out with people on TV, only to realize that they are all in present reality 50 years older than me. SO strange to think about and hard to accept sometimes..) And just as I seemed to see their lives change and age in an instant, I feel like mine can go by just as quickly- which makes me want to do something and be someone while I’m still young with so many paths I can choose to take.

*Some of my favorite folks- then and now- Jack Palance, Tony Perkins, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Paul McCartney. I watch them on TV when they were younger, and have to keep reminding myself they are much older in real life. It's sometimes like watching them become old overnight! But that's ok, they're still great! :)

But aside from not being able to go and do/see things, or to be with people that I’ve ‘fallen in love with’- because I’ve realized they only existed in 1956, I like to think that I can help keep some things as they were back then. If I keep blending the values of the 40’s, the fun of the 50’s, and an artistic free-spirit of the 60’s into myself and my future, I’m sure that I’ll be more likely to end up with a life that I’d rather live.

I know that even back then, life wasn’t without its problems (the grass is always greener...) but there’s still just such a magic about “the good ol’ days” that I think I’ll hang on to. I greatly enjoy so many timeless elements of the past, and I’m going to use this nostalgic light to brighten a future that might otherwise easily become dim.

So CHEERS to the new year, the future, the past, and always loving and living for the things that make us happy- no matter what era they started in..

~Melissa-Jean.