So what is Pretty Nostalgic Living??
Here are my thoughts .......
Pretty Nostalgic Living is about looking to the past to recapture
lost joys and ultimately to seek out solutions to the shortfalls of our present existence. This
may come as a shock, but if our lives were perfect then we would have no need
or desire to look back with the intensity with which we do today and we would all
be living in the moment and cheerfully moving forward into our futures.
Most of us however, are not totally happy with the way we
live and can’t help feeling there is something wrong, something missing and we remember fondly times in our own past when things felt good and so we try
to reconnect to that same point in our history, recalling memories of making
jam with Grannie or long bike rides through the dappled shade of overgrown
country lanes.
Nostalgia is described as a yearning for times gone by, but
really it is also the yearning for feelings from our own past, the times when we felt loved, stress free, happy, valued and appreciated.
Today we have the tendency to use a sort of collective
hindsight to look at the history, and to analyse the people who lived before us - picking details from their everyday lives and comparing them with our own. This is not particular to our own times, for
hundreds of years there has been a keen interest in history and the fascination
with the ways of past civilisations. It does, however, seem to be the symptom of increased
industrialisation and rapid advances in society, because before the 18th
century there was no need to reminisce about what life was like in times gone
by, as they would have been very much the same as they were then.
Our modern lives however, have grown far more complicated in
the past few decades than we could ever have imagined, as a human race, we are
achieving great things, communicating with more people, accumulating masses of material
wealth, experiencing wonders beyond belief and having many things that people
used to strive to acquire, handed to us on a plate with no effort from us other
than the transfer of digits from one bank account into another.
By looking backwards and being nostalgic we can see a
different world, one that is untainted by our modern trappings and we can select
just the parts that appeal to us. Being
Pretty Nostalgic is not about faithfully recreating a time in history in homage
to a forgotten era, there is no need to become a permanent historical re-enactor,
giving up the use of toilet paper and soap in order to appreciate how people
lived in mediaeval times. Instead it is
about how we as people today can use the lives of those who have already taken
their turn to teach us, benefiting from their successes and trying not to
repeat their mistakes.
Being Pretty Nostalgic is about fighting through the clutter
of modern living to find out what is really important to us. By looking at
the past, it is easy to notice the differences, we can see exactly what it is
that we have gained over time, the many extra things which didn’t exist years ago
and ponder “if they could live happily without them, can we?” However, we also have the enormous benefit of
spotting what wonderful things we have now that people in the past suffered
from not owning and this realisation should help us to appreciate these things
all the more.
How often do we hear stories of how people in the past were poor but happy? why is it then that we can feel so dissatisfied when we have access to so much?
Well that's my great quest - how to get what I need for myself and my family whilst following the Pretty Nostalgic Pledge to:-
Spend Wisely, Waste Less and Appreciate more
and above all else to enjoy life, feel satisfied and be proud of what I do
In essence
I want - Happy Days from Vintage Ways!
