My wife, as it turns out, can’t stand hanging out with my friends and I.  Now, it has nothing to do with them personally, mind you - she considers them all her very good friends as well.   Her lack of interest in our company is simple - it’s the content of the conversation that she can’t endure.  I guess I can understand her view.  You see, my friends and I LOVE to reminisce.  It’s not uncommon for the same stories to be told over and over again, each time growing more fantastic and entertaining, drawing the same laughs from the same punchlines.  If I were a betting man, I’d wager that my wife can tell the stories of places and people she’s never been or met as well as any of us.  Good stuff.

To be fair, since my friends live all over the country, the times that we get to see each other are few and far between.  Given that fact, one would assume that we would want to make the most of your time together, so why all the talk of the past?  Why spend a perfectly good dinner or campfire discussing things that have been so burned into our memory that it would be a cold day in hell before we were likely to forget it?  And if absolutely must bring up the same tales over again, why is the need there to embellish the truth - to make it something completely different than what it was altogether?  At that point, you’re not even remembering the past correctly, but rather defiling it, right?

I can only answer for myself when I say that there is a certain comfort to being nostalgic.  When I sit down with my friends over a beer or a meal, remembering stories from the past can be therapeutic, entertaining, enlightening, jovial or sorrowful.   

It allows the parties involved to remind themselves that they share a common bond together.  Even if the bond is the story itself, there is an instantaneous mental link connecting everyone - they all can see the same things in their mind’s eye.  They all know the story, right?  You watch a mental movie together, one that you’re a part of.  For friends that haven’t seen each other for a long time, it’s a fantastic way to journey back through the friendship and revisit those moments that helped shape the relationship.  Even for those who see each other on a regular basis, reminiscing can be everything from an escape to a form of entertainment.

I also believe there are strong human desires that take place when remembering the past.  How often do you ever someone older than yourself say something like, “Do you remember when a Snickers bar was 10 cents?” or, “Spending our days at <insert your favorite location here> was one of the best parts of the summer.”  The world tends to get more complicated as the years go by, or maybe the younger mind grasps the present better than one that has already been shaped through experience and age.  Nostalgic thoughts bring those simpler and better understood thoughts back, perhaps for review and analysis, or maybe just to bask in a memory of something that feels comforting.  It’s incredibly cliche - I was hoping to get through this article without the whole “simpler times” spiel, but alas I have failed.  What can I say, it has some truth to it.  Hindsight is a very powerful and insightful thing, and when given it, we tend to apply it to the life we’ve lived up to that point.  Sometimes we apply it as a lesson, and other times we simply just accept things happened for a reason.  Either way, being able to look back with some modicum of wisdom is an interesting way to introspect and perhaps even prepare for what the future holds.

Let’s not gloss over the fact that any good story is made better with one key ingredient: a good storyteller.  The lure of sharing a tale together hearing it retold is like watching a good movie.  You know what’s going to happen, but if the movie is a good one, you don’t care - you’ll watch it over and over again until you can spout the most trivial and cryptic quotes verbatim.  It’s the same thing.  Despite what others think (and many might dismiss this thought as comical), I truly believe that storytelling is basic human need - something just tells me that our brains our wired for it.  Whether we’re told the story through the TV, the radio, around a campfire or over a phone, a good tale can captivate and endear.  We are creative animals, and there is a creative instinct.  Revisiting old memories, adding something new each time, making the memory more than what it really was.  We build the story from a factual event to entertain, or perhaps reach a point.  Nevertheless, when someone tells a story in person, nothing seems to beat it.  That is why I know, or rather hope, that the art of storytelling never dies.  Check out the movie “Big Fish” by Tim Burton to see exactly what I mean - and I mean EXACTLY.  Man, that movie wells me up at the end. 

Why do you reminisce?  Is it for comfort, remembrance of something that you are afraid to forget, or is it to pour the wisdom of the present into events of the past?  I think one of the most important and interesting parts of the human psyche is the need, enjoyment and fear of delving into the past.  The mind never ceases to amaze me in it’s capacity to digest and relive the information it’s given.

So to my dear wife, I’m sorry, but you’ll probably have to hear the same stories at least a few more times - even though you can tell some of them more accurately then me or my friends at this point.

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