In the Twilight Zone episode, “Walking Distance,” a 36 year old company executive named Martin, wearied by adulthood’s stresses and responsibilities, seeks refuge in the past as he returns to his home town. Once there, he startlingly discovers that he has actually traveled back in time to his youth and revisits the places he frequented as a child.
Like Martin, we all have those moments when the present frustrates us and we long for the past. As the weights of school, work, relationships and future plans slowly crush us, we look to escape to the olden days.
Recently, I began my student teaching. Although I am still technically a student, I hardly feel like one anymore.
I essentially work a full time job and am responsible for the growth, safety and development of 135 children while they are in my classroom. If that isn’t a loud wake-up call that I am an adult, then I don’t know what is.
The teachers I work with are mostly middle aged men and women with kids, and some are even approaching retirement.
So instead of sitting in on conversations of Saturday night’s party or that funny thing a professor did, I now mostly hear talk about daycare for the kids, job contracts and life insurance policies.
As I begin to board the adulthood train, I find myself looking back behind me. I see many things. I see a little boy picking strawberries from his grandma’s garden in a far-off Polish village. I see that same little boy watching Pokemon while eating Lucky Charms in the morning before school. I see the boy, now a little older, trembling as he attempts to work up the courage to ask Allie to dance at his first junior high social.
I see the boy filming football games in high school, going to prom, getting lost at SXU as a freshman and joining The Xavierite for the first time.
Suddenly, I stop and think how quickly this all happened. The years seem to have passed unnoticeably. Life resembles a car ride where everything looks like it’s moving outside and you are sitting still. Yet in reality, you are moving just as quickly along with it.
As I dwell on all of this, I find myself listening to NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys while eating cookies my late grandma used to buy me in Poland.
I am watching more Pokemon, Digimon, Catdog and Rugrats lately than I probably should (I didn’t even care for Rugrats back in the day). I have even tried to reconnect the old Nintendo 64 and play some Donkey Kong and Pokemon Stadium 2.
Even making this reappearance in The Xavierite is an attempt to keep a piece of the past with me during this transitional period. On some days I close my eyes, hoping to have traveled back in time ten years upon reopening them.
“Walking Distance’s” conclusion has a lesson for me and for anyone else experiencing this heavy onslaught of nostalgia, however. The episode’s tear-jerking finale sees Martin meet his father in the past who learns that his son has somehow returned from the future.
After Martin tells his dad that he only longs to revisit the “band concerts” and “merry-go-rounds” of his youth, his father responds, “Maybe when you go back, Martin, you’ll find that there are merry-go-rounds and band concerts where you are. Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right place. You’ve been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.”
There is an important lesson to be learned in that quote. When we were children, we didn’t necessarily think that life was so great. I remember complaining and worrying about things then just as I do now.
Truth is, we tend to romanticize our pasts by remembering only the best parts. One day in the future we will probably remember our lives today with fondness and wish we could go back. As much as we may deny it, we will one day hear “Can’t Stop” by Miley Cyrus and think of 2013 (although that might be the one time we will wish not to travel back).
The point is that we should not worship the past at the expense of the present. There is a time to relive childish things, but we must not let it possess us.
So let us examine our present lives and find the beauty that exists in them. It’s there, but it’s quickly slipping away.
Tony Bara
Former Editor in Chief
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