Home in the past

December 19th, 2024

“One is always at home in one’s past…”

― Vladimir Nabokov, “Speak, Memory”

No, I am not. And I don't care if anybody else is, and that quote is bunk. The comfort of our past is only a figment of our imaginations. We don't remember correctly or clearly anything that happened to us years ago. We remember only a colorized and sanitized coping mechanism that lets us keep our sanity and hold back the despair.

I understand the longing for something comforting and simpler. We all suffer from this nostalgia, especially nowadays when there is no possibility of a reasonable future, but only the relentless spinning of the present without any reference to the past. We create our past to get us some (any) grounding to keep us from falling down.

I am not at home in the past. I took particular steps not to have a false view of what happened then, some time ago. I know what happened, and I don't want to dwell on it or reminisce about the good old days. There were never any good old days. Only we were either well-sheltered from reality or were (willingly or not) ignorant of the truth.

For the last four years or so, I’ve been creating — consciously, I might add — my true past. It is there in my mind exactly as it happened. I still do not want (or have any need) to go back and look for any comfort there even though I know it is the real remembrance. I also cannot think about the future too much, since I am mostly powerless to shape it beyond my being, my body, and my mind. That leaves the present only as any tangible understanding of time. And I want my present to be Epicurean in its basic meaning — without experience of pain or discomfort. Is it too much to ask?