Mon, 23rd June, 2025
I went out last week and passed by a bus stop near my house. I’ve lived here almost a decade and have seen this street hundreds of times, but this time I stopped to think. An image popped into my head of my first time at this bus stop.
It was significant because that was also my first time ever using the bus since moving to Malta. I remember the day - it was a late summer afternoon and it was hot and sunny, much like how it was this time. This town hasn’t changed too much and this area is basically the exact same. And yet, comparing what I see now to that vivid image in my head, it feels much different. The colours were brighter, the smells stronger, everything felt more active and alive and I could swear that there were just more things around. More buildings, more shops, more lights and sounds, but I know that there weren’t. It was just that the fresh experience of being there for the first time was pure and complete, without things filtered out by the brain as the unimportant details became background noise. The new and unique becomes the usual over time. Still the same, containing all the beauty it always did, but lacking the same significance.
People mention this phenomenon often. How the world when we were kids looked more vibrant, how the old movies we watched and games we played look way more detailed in our memory than they do when we revisit them as adults. It’s often referred to as having “nostalgia goggles” but I disagree. I think it’s a bit more than that. It’s not just about longing for the good old days, as much as it is our very human way of adding meaning to memorable events. We are constantly getting these kinds of experiences in our life that we only realise the significance of later on, when recalling them in comparison to where we are then. It is the greatest irony, being able to create wonderful memories and meaningful life events but never being in them unless through the lens of memory. Because the feelings during the said event as it happens, and the long term impact it gives after time does its thing are different, while still being inseparable parts of the same experience. Chasing each other through time, forever linked but never meeting.
I wonder if there is a way of experiencing these memories as they happen, a way to perceive the present along with the profound impact we get from a retrospective remembrance. But what’s more likely is that we are forever relegated to the constraints of time, memories, and longing.