You may be happier now, objectively, than you ever were in your earlier years. You may even have had a pretty miserable or perhaps lacklustre adolescence. Yet, once you've passed the age of 30, all of a sudden, the late teens start to acquire a glow that they perhaps didn't really deserve.
The popularity of shows harking back to the 1960's, most notably "Mad Men" (now in its fifth highly-anticipated season), isn't limited to adults of a certain age. Those horn-rimmed eyeglasses, sinewy sheaths, and old-fashioned old-fashioneds are taking hold again today. Perhaps everyone longs for a time that seems simpler, even though the era was hardly an age of innocence.
However, it's not simply a yearning for the past in a generic sense that drives people to try to relive past decades. Mental health professionals say a phenomenon called the "reminiscence bump" leads adults of all ages to remember with great clarity and fondness the years of their own youth. Autobiographical memory, your recall of the events of your life, is sharpest for the events spanning roughly the ages of 15 to 30. As you think back on your past, you're most likely to be able to generate strong mental images of what you were doing at that time, perhaps even to the date. It's literally, a "bump" in your ability to remember what happened during these key critical years of life.
Objectively speaking, the teens and 20's are not necessarily the happiest time of life. Researchers showed a number of years ago that the lowest percentage of people rating themselves as "very happy" was lowest among the 18-27-year-old age group. Why, then do so many people think back on these years with such fond memories? It turns out that the reminiscence bump applies particularly to happy memories. After the age of 30, when we think back on these times, the painful events become dimmer and dimmer. We shape and re-shape our life stories, reworking the narrative in a way that enhances the way we feel about ourselves now. It's adaptive to recall the happy, not the sad, events from our past. However, it's also important to reword some of those sad events. If we only focus on the positive, we'll lose touch with the reality of the events that actually shaped who we are now.
Retro-themed entertainment feeds into our tendency to reflect back on the positive events that shaped our sense of who we are now. They also reinforce our sense of identity. The late teens and early 20's are the time when we first take a serious look at forming our sense of identity. The music, movies, TV shows, books, and clothing of that time and the cars we drove become a part of who we are. Ever since the term "Baby Boom generation" became part of pop culture, groups of people born in the same historical era are now identified with their own catch phrases. "Gen X," "Gen Y," "Millenials," and "the Greatest Generation" are now woven into the fabric of the personalities of entire cohorts. The prevailing culture at the time of our youth becomes the mentality that we adopt, at least in part, when we think of who we are.
Emotionally connecting with your younger self helps you maintain a sense of continuity over time. Without memory, we would have no identity. The experiences you've had throughout your life help define who you are at any given moment.
Going retro doesn't have to mean going backward in your development. Spending too much time focused on the past can leave you ill-prepared to adapt to current challenges. However, dipping into the past to remind you of how you've coped with previous life stresses can help you strengthen your confidence in dealing with what you're facing now. Playing those golden oldies can serve as a form of comfort food for your soul.
Bring on those Mad Men fashions. Revel in the revival of the culture of your own younger days. Dip into your own past to refresh your sense of who you are now. Here are 3 pointers for enjoying the past to guide you in the present:
1. Use your past experiences to bolster your identity. Maintaining that connection with your early days can keep you grounded in the present. I find it always brings a smile.
2. Stay on top of what's current now. If you're going to age successfully, you need to be vitally involved in today's culture, even if you don't think it's "as good" as yours was.
3. Expand your reminiscence bump. Although most people focus on the positive from their early lives, it's important to balance those memories with others that may be less pleasant. There are many painful lessons of the past which is the path to a happier future.
This is why I love things from the past here, today.
