that stability is incredible. i’ve never really had it. i moved out at 15, after my parents’ divorce, and by the time i was done with uni i’d moved 12 times. at that point nobody in the extended family had their original living spaces left, if they were even still alive.
Wholesome.
Wholesome, reminiscent, and melancholy.
I wish I had that nostalgia for my hometown. Aoproaching it just fills me with dread. I hate so much about that place. It reminds me of isolation
originally from the rural southern usa, i do not miss it
I’m a bit older than this and I’ve been feeling this too. Getting older is weird.
It really hits when kids you knew when you were an adult are now adults. That, and when you start thinking ahead. 10 years from now, my mom will be 75…
You feel like a time traveller.
You are.
My elementary school is now a neighborhood. But I still walk down the road, and looking at the landscape, I know I stood here as a child wondering what the future might hold. It’s very strange. I feel like I have the memories of a different person.
My parents worked to manufacture this. The white picket fence. The wave to your neighbor that you regularly have over. The Dishonest Harmony…
My parents are christian trumpers. And if I could move farther away, I would.
If you have this, hold onto it.
Was in a car with some coworkers and I realized I’m now the oldest one in the car.
I yearn for the time when I was a kid. I yearn for the time when the right side of my body functioned almost as good as the left. I yearn to be picked up by my dad, to sneak chocolate chips out of the baking cupboard instead of just buying the damn things from the store. I yearn for my birthday to be an event with gifts and a day I’d anticipate two weeks in advance, instead of remembering I missed it again the following morning, after having spent my birthday at work. I yearn for summers off and I yearn for fifty dollars to be a lot of money with no responsibility.
I yearn for time.
Personally I’m just yearning for Silksong
who knew our version of poetry starts with ‘be me’
😭😭😭
I still yearn for the past some days. Days when I would see friends everyday. Days when I didn’t have to worry about bills. Days when things were simpler and easy. But, I realize that my life isn’t as bad as I thought. Parents rarely fight now. We have money and I’m, for the first time, financially stable. And, I still have a good relationship with my parents. When I visit them, I still go back to when I was a kid. Mom and dad would make my favorite food, I now have access to all my favorite cartoons from when I was a kid thanks to streaming. The big difference is now I can actually help them financially and physically as opposed when I was a scrawny, poor shrimp. I sometimes miss those days, but I’m making the best of what I have now
Man, I miss having almost no responsibilities and more time on my hands. But I really appreciate your viewpoint, gonna steal this positivity :) Guess my life could be much worse, made some errors but a lot of things turned out nice. Living a better life than my parents at my current age and there are even possibilities for a way upward.
I’m in the second half of my 30s now. I own the house I grew up in, it’s in bad shape, actually about to have it renovated it now. I live and work in a different country for a few years now, making a lot of money, but I dearly miss home. The street, the trees, all the memories of my childhood. It’s in the nice suburbs of an Eastern EU capital, so it has developed/gentrified well, with modern services and stores not far. My father is dead, my mother lives 3 streets from this house, which is also great.
Wife and I are actually considering moving back in a few years, after the renovation is finished. Some things feel priceless - to think we could raise a family in the same house in the same neighbourhood, have our children ride their bike under the same trees, next to the same small stream. None of this would of course be worth it, if we couldn’t make a living there, so we are in a lucky situation, and I understand many are not.
Still, I wonder if this is just some nostalgia for easier times, and if it makes sense to “throw away” a safe life in Western EU that many from this country would kill for, chasing a feeling like this. On the other hand, I think people spend their whole life trying to feel loved, successful and happy, so what else is really there? We can have all the rational components like health, safety and money in place, yet still feel unfulfilled inside.
If we are lucky to live to an old age, we’ll look back on our life to search for meaning and reflect on our choices, what will make the biggest difference? I honestly don’t know
It sounds like you’re comfortable enough to be debt free, but still chasing after something more, despite already having it right there in your backyard.
I don’t think you realize how little money you need in order to have a fulfilling life. You can live in the nice neighbourhood and take a low paying, stable job, be frugal, get good insurance, and enjoy the advantages of your class position.
Pardon me if this comes off as overly prescriptive or nihilistic.
Thanks, good and on point reflection.
I am definitely guilty of always wanting to chase bigger/better things.
Wife and I together are making a quarter of a million euros per year now, and even though tax eats a large part of it, that is an incredible salary in Western EU, especially for people from ex-Soviet countries. Yet I was unhappy that I didn’t make a promotion that would add only around 30k on this, but I wanted the prestige and recognition that comes with it.
You’re right that we only have very little debt, I could pay it off tomorrow, but it’s so cheap it’s better to keep it and finance the renovation from our savings. After that, we could move back to the renovated house in our home city, take a 50% salary cut, and still be fine. Or we could stay in Western EU, continue getting high salaries, then get a citizenship in a few years, and have are kids grow up and be natives here.
Let’s see what the future brings. I’m getting closer and closer to perspective you share in your comment. My unhappiest friend is a millionaire entrepreneur living in Dubai for tax reasons, with 2 kids in expensive private school, fancy apartment with own staff, and a wife that doesn’t seem to love him anymore. I envy his business success, but not his life, and he himself told me we would trade most of his money for a better marriage.
Life is weird, and it’s even weirder that I have some of the deepest and most meaningful online discussions about it with strangers under greentexts.
Funny old world, isn’t it? It sounds like you’re at an inflection point in your life. You’ve got all your data, and now you just have to make a decision. From my perspective the better decision seems obvious, hence why I felt compelled to offer my unsolicited opinion.
It’s funny that you mention you and your Wife are from ex-Soviet countries — maybe this is a stereotype, but in my personal experience the drive to excel and chase wealth seems to really take root in some ex-Soviet people or their children, even the ones who have nostalgia for socialism.
Maybe it’s no more than the normal rate but the juxtaposition makes it stand out, though.
I wish you good luck in your decision!
It’s nice seeing my parents but everything else in my hometown is depressing.
The things that have changed are depressing because they represent lost youth. But, the things that stayed the same are also depressing, because it means the same bunch of people just spent 30 years on a treadmill and got nowhere.
Spending 30 years doing the same thing doesnt mean they weren’t happy. Thats quite an assumption to make.
You’re the one that made an assumption. I said nothing about whether I thought they were happy.
“30 years on a treadmill and got nowhere” definitely has a negative connotation.
It’s negative, yeah, but that’s not the same thing either. I can’t believe I’m having to defend the position that not changing at all in 30 years could be seen as anything less than ideal. Did I touch a nerve or something?
I’m not the one who responded, just saying it’s pretty easy for someone to get the impression that you think someone stuck on a depressing treadmill might be sad.
It’s not the huge leap you seem to think it is from what you said.
Then let me take a crack at it. You are subtly moralizing against their lives as going ‘nowhere,’ suggesting that there is a ‘somewhere’ to go, that would be better than having remained. The reality is you are also on the treadmill, and cannot leave it. You have run faster than it has turned under you, and feel like moving closer to the front of the belt has given your life meaning, just as they have continued to run with their family and friends in a familiar constellation around them and taken meaning from that, but your fate, just like theirs, is to fall and be thrown off the back of the treadmill with everyone else.
Everything stays, but it still chnages.
The only constant thing in life is change.
