Blog 2204 – 10.30.2021

Nostalgia

The dictionary defines nostalgia as:

This morning as I sat thinking of what I might share with you today the words to one of my favorite Barry Manilow songs came to me, “I Hate To See October Go.” In the song Barry is singing about his nostalgia for the beautiful month of October and the painful surrendering of that lovely month and a special remembered love. It is natural that we would have a favorite season, month, and favorite memories.

I in no way defend the segregationist thinking attempt to recast slavery in a better light that still looms large in Margaret Mitchell’s best selling book and the movie made from it, Gone With The Wind, but there are some interesting glimpses into her mind and the minds of so many who thought then and still think like she did during her relatively short life from 1900 to 1949. Scarlett O’Hara, probably not one of the deepest thinkers, has several conversations with her mostly fantasy love Ashley. Rhett Butler knows her in some ways better than she knows herself and says it is because they think so much alike. He tells her in one place that she will never understand Ashely’s mind. The closest she comes before the woman who knows and loves Ashely best and her too, Melanie Wilkes, dies is in a conversation with Ashely where they are both remembering their neighboring plantations before the terrible war destroyed almost everything they knew then. Here is Ashley’s side of that conversation:

Barry’s Hate To See October go and Ashely’s short speech to Scarlett are both examples of what can all too often become crippling and life limiting nostalgia. We have all suffered bouts of it, but as Scarlett tries to point out to Ashley, we cannot let even our most beautiful memories of the past rob us of our love of life. No matter how tempting it may seem to pull up the warm covers of memory and sleep, the rest of our lives await, “Tomorrow is another day.” And this one, the only one that is real, to be enjoyed fully must be lived wide awake.

Or at least so say I.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11grZyzlXA2tsJhwmYaM1t50waYTXBti6/view?usp=drivesdk

Fool Hearted Memory