Idle Nostalgia

This specific vacation seems like the most boring one I've had as yet. I don't know if this is the case with everyone or if its just me, but having a lot of free time on my hands makes me think too much and often become nostalgic about the silliest of things. Be it people, be it memories, be it incidents, old books, movies or music- everything gets its sepia-tinted moment of glory in my sleep-addled brain.

A couple of days ago, my internet connection decided to break up with me. So I spent the afternoon watching TV shows that I had downloaded and saved on the computer. While watching, I realised that there is a certain pleasantness to watching old TV shows that the new shiny ones just don't have. Seriously. Compare a single episode of Full House to any new Disney show and you'll know what I mean. Forget Disney, watch an episode of The X-Files and then watch anything from today's line-up on AXN; the difference is palpable. I'm in no way saying that one is more superior to the other in terms of content or style, but the new shows do lack a certain charm. Maybe its the grainy video quality, the flower-power inspired clothing or the somewhat more 'conventional' story lines but the feeling in you is decidedly different as you watch them.

So what is the point that I am making here? Am I propagating how older TV programming was better? Am I writing a post on television at all? Well no, not really. The television shows are just a catalyst to get this post written. The point I'm trying to create is that the things that aren't in the present, that have gone by us, seem somehow more appealing to us- most of the time. Let me elaborate. One fine day, when you are bored and have nothing specific to do, and you suddenly come across the first book you ever read. Doesn't it make you smile? Or if your i-pod, through Shuffle, plays a song that used to be one of your favourites a couple of years back and which you haven't heard in a while. Or the world's most favourite example, thinking of the times when you were a kid who could spend all his time outside playing under the sun. The experience of these things is gone, but the memory remains- unfailingly beautiful.

Are we creatures that like rehashing things that are gone? We keep talking about how "they just don't make music like old hindi film music anymore" or how "nothing can come close to black and white cinema" or even how "my grandmum used to make the best food, no one else can make that now". If we get the same things today, just without the time-tag added to it, we probably don't value them in the same scale. Maybe, just maybe, if we look at everything we have today ten years from now, we'll probably feel nostalgic about it as well, but not today. The irony lies in the fact all of us seem, to me, incapable of enjoying today for today.

While this logic has definitely applied to things and incidents, I'm not quite sure if it applies to the people who were in our lives as well. Do we treasure them more when they're not around? Do we, unconsciously, wait for them to be gone so that we can appreciate them?
That does round up my list of irrelevant questions for the day. If you have answers, rants or scoldings for me, hit the comment box!