/// bizzare alacrity

a·lac·ri·ty /əˈlakritē/
Noun: Brisk and cheerful readiness.


The trick is that nostalgia has an important place in our lives. The adventures we slip into that involve longing for the past inspire dreams and generate the same ancient energy and dust that made up the characters and ideas of the first stories, that brightened cave walls, and patterned Mammoth hides. But nostalgia, if unchecked, can drag a person down, can gain unreasonable control of a person’s emotions, and can make them miserable.

Some feel nostalgia for high school, for college, for camps, for first loves or second houses or third spouses. Some wistfully want to go back to an era of protest and meaningful discourse, like the 1960s. And some even feel nostalgia for eras that haven’t ever existed—The Lord of the Rings is a good example.

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Nostalgia reduces smart men and women to defeatists that end up making life that much harder for their friends, family, and acquaintances.

So, cherish bizarre alacrity. It exists everywhere when you stop juxtaposing your life with icons. Slipping into nostalgia is good and healthy, and reminds us of our laurels, that seems true. To get stuck in a dream for a little too long is not shameful, because when it passes you have the wonderful chance to iconoclast and restructure how you look at the world around. With nostalgia checked you think of more, and flow through life along something of a sine curve, let’s say, rather than a straight axis. The ups and downs, when moderate, define the width of one’s capacity for thought. For instance, you see more of a crowd of people if you wander it in curved paths, rather than just straight through.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/the-hang-ups-of-nostalgia/