Living in the past

AS I STUMBLE into the “years that bring the philosophic mind,” (Wordsworth) I have been blessedly reconnected with long-lost friends and students, via Facebook. They have, as I have, morphed into our 70’s. Some are in their 50’s, once my students in Morton Grove, IL.

I see that most of them are grandparents living in the present and future. This is a good thing. I, in the minority, am irredeemably living in the past. And I have likewise been told repeatedly by my family and acquaintances, “You are always living in the past,” as if it were a pimple ready to pop.

By now, I refuse to deny it: I am obsessed with reminiscences of my family, current and ancestral, my childhood and that of my children and grandparents, my own experiences and deeds, my achievements and my misdeeds. A past that is happy, but with more than its bitter dose of melancholy.

No Freud for now, my depression, etc. But a curiosity: Is there anyone else out there who unapologetically lives in the past? Or I am alone, luxuriating in a bittersweet past?

Answer, please.

Rabbi MOSHE CHAYIM (Marc) WILUDZANSKI- WILSON writes from Greenville, SC