Rosy Retrospection

There was a principal of psychology I learned in a college class: rosy retrospection. It simply means that in your memory a certain event is recalled fondly, when in reality that event was not as great as you remember.

Do you ever think to yourself, 'I didn't know how good I had it 6 months, a year, two years ago'? Maybe you got a promotion, maybe you changed jobs, maybe you moved, maybe you did or didn't have a girlfriend/boyfriend. You remember all the positive memories but forget the bad. If you changed jobs for example, you remember all the easy and fun stuff you did at your old job...and any new tasks you have at your new job that you didn't have before make you wish you were back at the old job. But in reality, you hated that job, it was easy but you dreaded going to work everyday...you forget about the commute, the bad boss, the smelly furnace in the winter. It just seems better because you've blocked all that bad stuff out because we as humans don't want to remember the bad stuff.

Not everything was so much better in the old days. Everyone points to the 1950s as a time when people were so friendly and America was such a wonderful place to live. But what about organized crime? What about segregation? What about not having half as good of medicine or medical practice as we do now? Was it really so great, or have we romanticized that era to form a rosy retrospection?

People remember how their life was 10-15 years ago. They think it was so much better...was it? Think really hard about the difficult things that were going on, is it any different from the difficult things going on now? Will you look back 10-15 years from now and wish you were back to this point in time?

The point of all this is to say that life was not better in the past than it is now, and you don't need to have one half of your brain recalling memories and the other half hoping the future will bring good times because now is no good. The fact is we should live in the current moment because there was bad times and there will be bad times just like there is now. And there was good times and there will be good times just like there is now.

JB