Nostalgia, regret and the memory of meadows

As Jesus made his long journey down to Jerusalem, anticipating there the final clash of worlds, I wonder if he brooded nostalgically over the pungent smell of sandalwood, the heft of a hammer in his hand, the vision of his father bent over a block of sycamore planing it to a smooth, aromatic finish. Did he long to feel again the warmth of his mother's hand on his forehead, her quiet movements around the house as she prepared the evening meal?

As he lay awake at night, did he long for the countryside of his youth, the hills and valleys around Nazareth where he spent long summer days of discovery with friends, the beach days skipping stones on the sparkling surface of the Sea of Galilee?

For what was Jesus nostalgic, what did he long to retrieve when he cried out in agony in Gethsemane, “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.”

It comes as no surprise that age longs for youth, that the river imagines brilliant, sparkling mountain freshets just before it merges into the massive, faceless ocean. “ . . . knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back,” is Robert Frost's way of naming what is every human's dilemma: roads have forks; choosing one rejects the other. Jesus wishing in the moment of greatest agony that he had chosen to be a carpenter instead of an itinerant teacher and rabbi.

There is a place where the nostalgia for times and places past crosses the line into regret. A place where fond memory morphs into bitterness. “I took the wrong fork” consciousness. And that is a tragedy all on its own. Years spent languishing in the house of regret are wasted years. Bitterness shrivels the soul like a plant without water draws down into itself under the noonday sun, fades and dies.

For some, it would be easy to jump in at this point with cliched solutions to the problem of regret, of bitterness at things gone wrong and opportunity missed. To assert that, “Yes, but Jesus ended his prayer for relief with 'nevertheless, thy will be done,'” or to say as some do to the clinically depressed, “Just snap out of it,” isn't helpful.

Regret and bitterness are not choices at any age; they're more like a sinking into quicksand.

As I wander through the local nursing home, the drawn, blank faces of some residents contrast sharply with the buoyant, lively demeanour of others. Setting aside for the moment the obvious probability that clinical depression doesn't disappear when one turns 75, or that serious tragedy may well mark the decline of some, my mind turns to the actions of others that would brighten the lives of those who can't help themselves. One conclusion I've reached is that nothing brings on bitterness like abandonment, and how easy it is to neglect mom when the home is “catering for her every need.”

Not by a long shot!

(A centenarian was asked what he would wish for given the opportunity. “I'd love to be 80 again,” he said.)

At one time in my life, I was away from my native surroundings for three straight years. I longed for home, for the blue, blue skies of Saskatchewan, the smells of prairie autumn, the wide, wide spaces and the pastures of my youth, cows feet clicking on the pathway along the creek. What was I doing in Germany?

It's ironic, but such nostalgia only happens when we find ourselves in faraway places, physically or emotionally.

In any case, the lost worlds for which we pine likely no longer exist. The pastures have been ploughed down, the houses in which we were born have been bulldozed and the smell in the air is the aroma of concentrations of manure on corporate mega-farms—mixed with industrial effluent.

“Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”

“You can't go home again,” someone has said. “Better do the best you can with the choices that placed you where you are,” he might have added.

This is not the best way, turns out. Unfortunately, it's the only way.