Nostalgia- a resistance to mourning

Sitting beside the CEO of a local bank on a plane to NYC we got to talking about how things had changed, and how we remembered the way things used to be, la de da. We both became quiet after that. And then I said that I believed nostalgia was a resistance to mourning. That it was good to look back and reflect. And his reaction of this successful man gave me notice. He nearly gasp, saying, "Yes, I believe you are right." Repeating what I'd said as if for us both to remember.

Considering the Hoover Dam we may wish to look back to a time when there a washed out desert as the Colorado ran free, that is now a mass of irrigated fields. Those were days of free surrender from a river so bold that is no more. And it may be sad this has changed, only because it once was.

Then again, remembering the dam and how the workers at the site felt when they were building it, we become nostalgic for that time because it happened with a certain beginning and ending. To think of the dam in this way, i.e.; what happened as it was built, we resist mourning. We look at the past in its greatness. Even if the past was "wrong" in many ways. We see the people, the place as it was changing before our very eyes. It helps, this nostalgia. It helps us to keep the faith as we direct our courses out into the future.