Nostalgia
From Greek algos "pain, grief, distress" (see -algia) + nostos "homecoming," from neomai "to reach some place, escape, return, get home," according to Watkins from PIE *nes- "to return safely home" (cognate with Old Norse nest "food for a journey," Sanskrit nasate "approaches, joins," German genesen "to recover," Gothic ganisan "to heal," Old English genesen "to recover").
I didn’t think I was nostalgic but that appears not to be the case.
In short: I want to return home.
Home in the sense of: knowing the value of values (e.g. love, kindness and honesty); being with people who don’t covet anything more than a ‘nice quiet life’; and to connect, in an animistic way, with this world — as I believe we once did (it was a long time ago).
I’m in the minority, though.
Scilicet, everyone I know wants to live a progressive life, which means that they expect or want everything to get better.
“What’s wrong with that?”
Everything.
Put it another way: with c.8 billion on this planet all wanting to live a safe, comfortable and (reasonably) prosperous life — I don’t think this conjecture — it can’t of escaped your attention the wanton destruction of the earth, seas and skies to provide for this.
Yes, I know, you’ve heard it all before but that which goeth up and up, in ye old Icarus style, will bring us all, and all sentient life, to a very messy End.
When I say ‘End’, I mean to say that we’ll end up wiping us of the face of the earth because of our materialistic needs and wants.
And, yes, that’s a moot point, particularly as I won’t be alive to see ‘it’; but I won’t be persuaded that this current modus vivendi, that hinges on an extractive way of being, is (*laughs*) sustainable. In fact, that word is a misnomer unless that is the world can regrow itself of precious metals, a clean sea and the desecration of the land that has been purloined in the name of farming etc.
In the end, like so many things that I opine on (I don’t share them all here or online), I know that I’m shouting into the void; and my issues are my cross to bear and no one else’s.
But mark my words: this isn’t normal.
I’ll say that again:
this isn’t normal.
Until the next time.
Love,
Julian
Photo by Ka Communications on Unsplash