Letting go of the past is something we’ve all been told to do. But is it possible?
My all-time favourite band is U2. I got that from my mom who was sixteen when she saw her first U2 concert for their Joshua Tree tour. I grew up listening to all of their albums and dancing to concert DVDs. My mom called those midnight dance sessions “practice” for when I was to go to my first one. We were never obsessive, just wholehearted fans.
With every new album, instead of the absolute excitement that I felt, my mom felt hesitation and worry. Is the new album going to live up to her expectations of the Joshua Tree U2 that my mom fell in love with? Will this new album disenchant the mystical illusion that is U2 in her mind?
My mom has been to every single tour that U2 ran… until Songs of Innocence. It sounded too different to her. It wasn’t the U2 she grew up with. The tradition ended.
Something changed in her, though. It was something that I’m sure everyone reading this has felt at some point.
My dad bought her the newest album Songs of Experience for Christmas. My boyfriend bought me the vinyl for my birthday just two weeks prior to this, so I knew I was in love with the album already.
My mom didn’t put it on right away in the fanatical way that most fans do. She didn’t play it for weeks. She heard me playing the vinyl, and without actually listening, she expressed those fears of it being different. She wouldn’t be able to relive her teenage carefree years with an album that didn’t sound like the vintage U2.
I told her I truthfully thought it was amazing and one of my favourite albums (a huge statement as you could imagine). I encouraged her to listen to it, to let go of the thoughts of what it “should” be and to accept the new music that sounded amazing still, even if different.
My boyfriend and I listen to the album a lot, and so when we came home to the sounds of my mom’s CD playing in the dining room, a wine glass in her hand, I was happily impressed.
“You’re finally listening to it!”
She told me she finally gave it a chance and that she loved it. She was beginning to analyze the William Blake aspects of the album, the religious backdrop to all the songs, and everything she always loved about U2 – without it being the Joshua Tree.
She decided that no matter how much she listened to albums like Joshua Tree, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, The Unforgettable Fire, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and the rest… she couldn’t return back to those times. Bono could TRY to act like he was the same as when he first performed “With or Without You”, but he could never be 100% what he was because Bono himself has changed – with age, maturity, and experience. A little tipsy, my mom looked at me with a Gatsby-like expression and repeated the words “you can’t go back”.
Although most of you reading this are probably young and haven’t experienced a mid-life crisis, a similar phenomena happens as we age through teenagerdom. As we’re going through those rough teenage years, a lot of us are constantly haunted by the fact that we will never be kids again. We obsess over the nostalgia of running around, being messy, having no worries, and the ultimate freedom of being a child. Eventually we come to realize that we will NEVER be the child we once were.
The distinction between child and adult is obvious. We can more easily accept that we are not the same as when we were kids. The difference between us at 18 and us at 21 is a lot blurrier. We have trouble letting go of the boy that broke our heart, the course that brought our average down and lost our scholarship, and the changes we’ve experienced in ourselves.
Some of the changes I’ve experienced in myself were not always anticipated or ideal. I saw it as I’m growing away from myself and that I need to go back to how I was at 18 when I was “happier”. But a lot of our past is reconstructed incorrectly in our brains. Our brains do not save memories; they reconstruct moments as memories in our heads. These visuals and feelings of our past seem believable, but they’re not always accurate. The term for this is seeing “la vie en rose” (great song, by the way). So while we may look fondly back on our pasts, we often forget the pain and resentment we had while living in those times.
Change is not a bad thing. Trying to stay the same is. Our bodies change, our minds change, and our visions for the future change. We can’t keep holding on to things that don’t exist anymore simply because it deters us from appreciating what we have in the moment. If my mom never let go of the fact that U2 are not 16-year-old boys anymore, then she would never have learned to love and accept this new album which she is so excited to see the concert for.
Let go and take hold of the people and opportunities around you. And be at peace.