Pom in Oz with Derek Goforth: In a time when nostalgia is big business, it is healthy to dwell on the past?

Is it unhealthy to dwell on the past? Is there something wrong with thinking of times gone by, of passed experiences and focusing on memory? Honestly, I don’t think there is, as long as we are able to see the past for what it is — something to learn from or move away from, or sometimes both. Nostalgia is big business nowadays. Retro gaming, 80’s and 90’s bands and artists making comeback tours. There is a ton of money to be made from evoking memories of another era. Let’s take as a great example the Spice Girls, who have long been rumoured to be embarking on a “comeback” world tour and most recently it’s been reported they will reunite for the coronation of King Charles III. If a tour ever happens, it will sell out, people will clamour for tickets, and it will make the girls and their associates very rich (even more so). But it will also make a lot of people my age happy, perhaps fleetingly, but happy nonetheless. But why? Because the music was ground-breaking and needs to be revisited in its full glory? Maybe not. It’s about being taken back to a happier time, but the time when the girls were in top form may very well not have been bliss. Perhaps we choose just to look at it through rose-tinted glasses. Rather than thinking of bills, work, kids and responsibilities, we will be taken to memories of when we believed we were young, free and single . But we won’t dwell on the woes of this time. It’s the same with retro gaming, TV and talking about school days. We seek to detach, to go to another place, where all we remember is fun, laughter and friendship. And that is good, I think it’s healthy, if we can leave the memory back where it is and return to our lives, hopefully more appreciative of what we have now. Derek Goforth is a teacher at Geraldton Christian College