I’m going to talk about nostalgia. I am a slave to nostalgia. Sometimes I’m caught believing that the best times of my life have already passed, and I am constantly attempting in vain to recreate these moments. Lately, I’ve begun to accept that better is possible, but I have to work and risk myself, in order to acquire it.

My closest friends, on separate occasions, have all shared with me a common desire: to have lived in times before the present. This time range includes the early 20th century, up to and including when Kennedy was elected president. While at first I thought it was an escape from modern despair, or because the time period has been romanticized greatly by history, I think that they are motivated by something else here.

Back then, beauty and elegance were a priority. Intellect, hard work, and reason were rewarded qualities. Today, everything is cold, forced, instant, unsavored. Liberals and conservatives combat to create a society where either nothing or everything is taboo, instead of a balance where extremism is not applied universally. There is a cruel counterbalance between the haves and have-nots. People suffer who should never have to. Some live their lives without ever really living.

I believe this to be the source of my longing of the past: what is important to me used to be common desire, and yet now it is lost, and almost forgotten. Others cannot understand my priorities, and in their own ways mock and ridicule them. My staunchness and unwavering has cost me many acquaintances, but those who remain, are precious to me, for we share a dying dream.