If you will permit me, dear reader, allow me to be honest and frank with you.

To be perfectly honest, I have always hated the concept of nostalgia just on sheer principle. Having been invested in studying history for as long as I can remember, I know how much cultural and physical damage can be caused by people yearning for a mythic time in the past that only existed in their heads. That is part of why I make it a point to only yearn about specific elements of my own past, while being well aware of everthing else that proved to be painful, even outright miserable. After all, I pride myself in being a rational, clear-thinking and stoic individual, and I strive to make more of an effort to do just that.

Which is why as of late, I have been pining for a time that faded away a long time ago: the years before this current one. No, no, I have not taken leave of my sense, let me make that abundantly clear. It is simply because, for all of the problems the past had brought to us, they pale in comparison to what will probably lie ahead in the future. I know I need not to be afraid, but I am painfully aware that many of my fellow human beings simply do not have that luxury.

But nonetheless, I have had a strong urge to go back and find all of the great works of entertainment from the first half of this decade and watch as many of them as I can. Things like Beasts of the Southern Wild, Looper, and The Kids Are All Right, along with shows such as Jessica Jones, Rome and Mozart in the Jungle, just to name a select few that should become widespread and respected many years down the line. Not to mention video games like Super Mario Galaxy and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, just to give myself as a bit of a break from life. Even in the face of what I need to do in the moment, I seem to need these little comforts from the past, just to keep me going forward.

Maybe, I and those like me should be righteously criticized for wanting to live in a bubble, for having an unwillingness to go out and confront the real world. Perhaps we are part of a generation that is not accustomed to hardship of any kind, and this nostalgia is nothing more than child's play done by "adults". But let me ask you this: Is our nostalgia any more absurd and childish than the nostalgia that you may have? Especially if you have nostalgia for the 50s and the 80s, when the vast majority of the films and shows then were derivative and blatantly pandering to audiences.

Then again, I'm probably just bitter over everything that has happened lately.