Do you reminisce much about your past?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m 55. And it seems the older I get, the more I think about my past experiences, and it fills me with complex emotions.

My mother is 82 and still lives in the house I was born in. I’ve been going over on the weekends to do yard work (it’s on a couple acres). And when I do, a flood of memories come back. I see the yard & creek I played in when I was five years old, and it makes me feel… well, I’m not sure. I think back to the wonderful & simpler times, but overall I feel sadness that those days are over.

I see where we once had a very large vegetable garden. After we planted the seeds, we would go down to the creek and fill old coffee cans with water, and then pour water on the seeds. I see the bridge my dad built. I see the clothes line my dad installed. He put the poles in concrete, and he wrote the date “6-69” in the cement before it cured.

When I see the lawn, I remember my mother cutting the grass on our riding mower. She would sometimes hold me in her lap while she drove the mower.

When I was between 4 and 6 years old I remember my father building a “rec room” in the basement. He did it all himself: he installed brick and mortar halfway up the interior wall, and the remainder of the wall was barn siding. He built a beautiful bar. It’s all still there, but in very poor shape. Now, when I walk through the basement, I remember my dad spending countless hours cutting wood on his Craftsman table saw, and I smile. He was extremely talented. But it also brings me sadness when I walk through the basement now, and seeing the condition it’s in. Those days are over.

The last few years I have been trying to recall all the vacations we have taken with our children over the past 20 years. I have been going through old emails and documenting the places we stayed at, along with the dates. Such wonderful memories. But when I look at the pictures we took, it brings me sadness to know those days are over. Our children are mostly grown now and have their own lives.

I still reminisce a lot about the past. Including people I knew in college and work colleagues. I will Google their names to see if they’re still alive and (if so) what they’re doing. I am not sure why I do it, because (as mentioned) it tends to make me sad. I am curious if anyone else does this.

2

A lot of people do this.

And it’s often not because they’re obsessed with the past. Instead, it stretches out its tentacles to ensnare them regardless of their wishes.

3

I do, but it gives me anxiety. I keep thinking I was such an immature naive teenager or 20-something.

I hate it!

4

Yes. We all do this. I’m an elderly widow now, hard to believe, no family to speak of. I just moved into a nice little apartment and am selling the house where I lived for 35 years, married and raising one child. I was a SAHM. I wasn’t happy in the marriage, but I wasn’t totally miserable, and pretty much did what I wanted. Happy memories, sad memories. I had to clean out the house this summer and I walk through the empty rooms now and feel…actually, I don’t feel very much at all. It was such a source of stress for so long, I’m glad to get rid of it. … As for remembering my ‘wild youth’ - I often wonder what happened to a handful of friends and exes, who disappeared off the face of the earth AFAIK. Bittersweet memories. … I realize I made out pretty well in life compared to some, I only wish I had been…happier. Came from a dysfunctional family all dead now, don’t miss them much, and that affected everything that happened to me for decades after. … Funny how I think, one never wonders, when young, what will happen much later in life. Sick and dying alone? Still a little active and independent? Big jolly loving family or living like a recluse in God’s Waiting Room?.. I do remember my husband was a wonderful gardener and grew amazing lavish displays of flowers and plants. Our backyard looked like a little green park with paths and a fountain, and big trees. (I had to have them cut down, 60 foot Norway maples, threatening to fall on the house. Another source of stress). When I had the cleanout guys empty the place I didn’t dare watch all that ‘stuff’ being taken away, I didn’t dare. But the last thing on the truck was the old red wheelbarrow, and that made me cry…I sold some things, gave away a LOT. Art supplies, hobby stuff, movies, CDs, clothes, artwork - a dozen expensive framed prints, dozens of books, kitchen stuff…All part of the past, no room for all of it any more. :person_shrugging:

5

The fact your Mom lives in your childhood house and you spend time there now certainly keeps that stuff top of mind. As a counter-example it’s been easily 25 years since I last saw my young childhood house driving by, and 55 years since I was inside it or its yard. That makes that part of my past far more nebulous to me than yours is to you.

It’s not that I’m “right” and you’re “wrong” or vice versa. My point is simply that all behavior of all humans has a component of [stimulus elicits response], and you’re getting a lot more nostalgia stimulus than most. And therefore should be unsurprised about getting more response too.

We were all naive teens and 20-somethings. There’s a reason the word sophomore (“wise fool”) exists in English and is applied to both 16yos and 20 yos.

Yes, I cringe when I think of some of the life-alteringly stupid shit I did. But IMO it makes no more sense to feel bad about having been a clueless teen than it should feel bad to realize that you were once 3 feet tall or could once just barely talk intelligibly.

6

I occasionally look at places I’ve lived on google maps street view. Now, with Zillow, if the house has sold recently, there are pictures of the interior. My wife and I did this for our first house - the place has had a complete makeover and new landscaping. Gone are the parkay floors, the decorative touches we added, the cherry trees we planted and got one good crop befofe we moved away. What used to be our daughter’s room big enuf for her crib and changing table. The patio cover and hammock. All gone or changed.

Anyway, I think it’s good to look back occasionally, as it gives you perspective: Where have you been, how far you’ve gone, where you are now, and where you’re going. Not good to obsess over things, and if it brings sadness, probably best not to dwell on what’s gone. I am thankful for the good times and glad to have had them.

7

We mainly reminisce about dogs of the past.

Sometimes it’s like there’s a ghost pack of canines roaming around.

8

I believe we should, universally, slap ourselves on the forehead and rue how stupid we were when we were young. It’s a good thing - it means we’ve learned and grown. If you’re essentially the same person at 60 as you were at 20, you probably haven’t learned much.

I think about certain simplified beliefs I had, moments where if I had read the room better, said something else (or nothing at all) aspects of my life would be different. But that’s OK. I got here.

But in a more mundane way, I reminisce about the past a lot. I keep track of certain life events based on other events. “Let’s see, I met Matilda when I was in grad school, so that would have been in Bismark, North Dakota around 1992. That was also the year I rode a motorcycle for the first time.”

I’ve had several career changes, many adventures and I enjoy thinking about what I’ve done. My journey has mostly been fun and interesting, to me anyway.

9

Kind of a miracle that we can do such things. I spend a lot of time with old family letters and Google Earth. It is amazing what you can explore without ever leaving the house.

10

I’ve been pretty good at turning my back on my past, both places and (with very few exceptions) people. I don’t have much nostalgia about childhood or adolescence, except for a very few people my own age I knew, about whom I occasionally wonder what happened to them, what kinds of lives they had. Occasionally I have tried googling them or looking for them on Facebook, but never with any luck. I went to a couple of high school reunions, including the 40th, and that turned out to be a very sterile exercise. So I just keep chugging along with a few friends and acquaintances at a time.

11

I’m still strongly tied to my past. I live on the piece of property that was my first home, over 65 years ago. I socialize regularly with a woman who was my best friend at ages 3-9, my home still contains things owned originally by my grandparents and contains family artifacts going back to the civil war. And I’m a local history/genealogy buff.

But I also think a lot about my experiences away from this area, ages 9-35. Those times were extremely formative and I’m still in close touch with many people from that era. I think that’s just a consequence of being older, a bit wiser, more patient, and also wondering where the time went.

12

Overall, very well said. As to this particular snip:

My life has had far more twists and turns than young me expected it would.

The good news is it was far more interesting than a more straight-line path would have been. The other good news is that it has (so far) avoided acute catastrophe. Which happy outcome can’t be guaranteed in the other thousands of hypothetical lives I might have lived had seemingly minor decisions or chances gone another way. Or had my major decisions been made otherwise than they really were.

In the end, all we can do is marvel at the road taken; thinking too much about roads not taken only engenders regrets.

13

I’ve done the same. The only person I’ve kept in touch with from my HS class is my wife. We both agree we’re in no rush to go to further HS reunions.

14

I don’t know if “reminisce” is the right term, but I usually think about my past in terms of “Man, if I could just rewind back to January 2019 or April 2020, knowing what I know now, I’d have saved myself so much trouble and not gotten into this bad relationship or career move or failure at school.”

Occasionally, I do look back to some happy memories in the 1990s.

15

The OP @Crafter_Man may find this other current thread interesting:

16

I used to be like that quite a bit. It left me very unhappy. Part of my journey of recovery from addiction led me to finally no longer regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it. That was one of things recovery promised me, and I did achieve it.

I hope you can come to peace with your past.

17

At a friends last month we pulled out a high school year book and played “dead or not dead?” We are in our mid 50’s. I found that I didn’t know what happened to all but a handful of people I went to school with. Mostly I just left it all behind me and don’t care much about those times.

18

My wife would tell you that I basically LIVE in my past. She would also point out that I’m perpetually 10 years old…not 70 as I am IRL.

I had a great childhood where I lived in fun places and got to do lots of activities. My family was not at all dysfunctional…no divorce, no delinquent or criminal behavior, decent income, stable environment, etc. In fact, I probably had what many people would call a “Ray Bradbury” childhood. And I remember a great deal about it, from the mischief my siblings and I would get up to to the really memorable family, vacation, and holiday events.

And what ties it all together is music. I hear a song and immediately think, “I first heard that right after my first wife and I separated.” Or, “That was the theme for the Junior Ring Dance at our HS.”

19

Thanks, I hope so too, been doing various therapy.

20

What Velocity mentioned further upthread certainly applies to me. My upbringing was fairly dysfunctional (but not in any criminal way) and there are snippets of mental illness in our family. I have a first cousin who’s bipolar and I might be somewhat autistic; I’m getting a psych evaluation in April.

All that to say that I have something physiologically wrong or am the result of bad software programming. Despite those obstacles I have done reasonably well, and despite how reasonably well I’ve done, I can never say that I’ve loved life. Now that I generally recognize my issues, I can look back at most of my life and regret and resent how I’ve misinterpreted the positive things that people have said to me or done for me, such that there is a 40 year trail of alienated acquaintances and colleagues plus an emotionally damaged (by me) wonderful wife.