Challenging Nostalgia and the Fallacy of “Return”

There has been a lot of talk about “returns” in our recent history. Many of these conversations have centered on supporting each of us in reinstating our pre-COVID ways of existing: bringing teams back into the office, keeping children in classrooms, and opening international borders for travel. Others couch the concept in phrasing that eludes to a general previous state of being which is better than the current status quo, such as the use of the word “Again” in the 2016 presidential campaign slogan of then-candidate Trump or the word “Back” in the 2021 Biden/Harris Build Back Better policy. This callback to a former time reflects an understandable hunger for security.

But what is this “before” that so many of us are clamoring to return to? What was so great about it, and what exactly are you missing from it?

This article is not here to answer those questions; I am not hear to wax poetic about the “before COVID” times. Why not? Partly because there are too many answers to list and/or prioritize in one article. Partly because I don’t know that I, personally, am pining for any specific aspect of pre-COVID times.

But the real reason this article is not about the “Again”s or the “Back”s is simple: What we were doing before brought us into COVID times. And I don’t need to be here again.

RETURNING TO WHAT?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a return is “a situation in which someone or something goes back to an earlier position or activity.”

For many, the promise of a return may bring about feelings of comfort: you were there once before and survived (or perhaps even prospered), so you can do it again. It means we know what to expect and we understand the tools in our toolbox (including how to use them [maybe]). We experience less stress when things are familiar, when they are ritualized.

However, for every one good thing we miss about “before” there is at least one stressor, challenge, or harm we experienced. (And yes, I made that correlation up; but stick with me.) There is a likelihood we do not remember those negative experiences. Part of the reason for this is that we are neurologically geared to seek out the familiar, even when the familiar actively harms us or isn’t aligned with our long-term goals or values. Combatting that default preference for the familiar takes a lot of effort. There is also the possibility that we didn’t understand the experience of the “before” time as negative or correlate it with the harm we then experienced. Regardless of our relationship to that negative, we must acknowledge it was there, if for no other reason than none of us go through whole periods of time unscathed.

In asking to return, we are asking to face those stressors, challenges, or harms once again, with the same inability to respond to them that we had the first time around.

BUT YOU KNOW BETTER NOW

If you read that last statement and thought, “But Peter, I can respond differently this time around based on what I know now” then this article is for you. Because that is my point: returns require all things to be the same, including what you know and what you did with that information. If any of that has changed, then you have not, in fact, returned; you have gone somewhere new.

(Side Note: if you want a fun, fictional glimpse into what happens if you change one thing and then try to return, check out Netflix’s adaptation of the graphic novel, The Umbrella Academy.)

And the differences may not be individual to you. The micro-, meso-, and macro-levels we all operate within are constantly in flux. Sometimes this is a result of our individual actions (e.g., voting) (while recognizing not all of us can vote when, as, and where we should be able to), while other times it is a byproduct of something out of our control (e.g., your boss deciding to downsize and eliminate your position).

Being able to respond differently means we have learned something, the system(s) in which we operate have changed, or some combination of the two.

GO SOMEWHERE IMPROVED

I don’t have all of the answers as to how we move forward without repeating the mistakes of our pasts. What I do believe, however, is that pining for a strict return to a previous time guarantees our past will continue to haunt us. What is more – we will never progress or grow if our frame of reference remains retrospective.

I want you to remember the good times. I would love to reminisce with you about your wins, successes, and triumphs. But I do not wish to do that at the expense of us learning and moving ever forward into the great unknown that is the future.

So as we contemplate what the world looks like as COVID settles into its endemic existence, I urge you to reject the nomenclature of a “return” and to talk about what happens next for what it really is: an improved way of doing things built upon the lessons we have spent the last 2.5 years learning.