10/28/2025
Blog Post
The Myth of the Good Old Days: Remembering the Feeling, Not the Form
Reflection
I was recently reflecting on something I often hear people say - â I miss the good âOl days.â
There are moments when the world feels heavy â when the noise and speed of change, technology, and uncertainty makes us long for a time that felt easier.
We look back through the haze of memories, reaching for something that once brought peace or joy, and we whisper to ourselves, âThings were better back then.â
But what if what we truly miss isnât the time at all â itâs the feeling that time once awakened within us? This is a remembrance of Presence, an invitation to see that the past never held the magic. We did.
Humans Selective Memory
When life feels chaotic, the mind searches for balance, coherence. It drifts backward in our memory banks, gathering fragments, like currency, of comfort from days gone by â a song, a person, an experience, a particular decade of our lives, a way life once seemed â betterâ.
But memory is selective. Itâs a creative story teller, itâs not an archivist.
Our memories often reflect not objective reality, but the stories we wish were true â the emotional truth we long for, or what we needed them to mean, rather than the factual one.
We ârememberâ what we wish we could have held onto. Thatâs why when so many will reminisce about their past they tend to embellish.
When someone tells the same story again and again, they arenât just repeating it â theyâre re-living it, editing it, and subtly reshaping it each time to match their current emotional truth or unmet longing.
Every retelling becomes a small act of self-revision:
⢠sometimes to find healing,
⢠sometimes to make sense of what once felt senseless,
⢠and sometimes simply to anchor identity â âthis is who I was, and this is what it meant.â
Over time, those stories gather layers â a little softer here, a little grander there â until the emotional truth becomes more important than the factual one. Itâs the psycheâs way of editing experiences to preserve or create coherence, and unity out chaos. It shows us not only what happened, but what our heart still yearns to reconcile or recreate.
We highlight the golden threads of joy and connection, leaving the shadows unexamined â the conflict, the struggle, the pain, or the loneliness that coexisted in that same frame of time.
So the illusion forms: that the past was somehow better, purer, or simpler.
But what we are actually craving is the âfeeling stateâ those moments held â not the era itself.
The same reshaping that happens with pleasant memories also happens with painful ones.
We may not realize it, but every time we retell a wound, we rework it â adding small details, changing tone, deepening the emotion â not to exaggerate, but to find completion. Each retelling is a reaching for wholeness, an attempt to bring coherence where once there was only confusion or hurt.
When someone repeats or embellishes a story of pain, theyâre often trying to reclaim agency, or they may seek validation where they have felt invisible, or they may be trying to integrate something that fractured their sense of self.
Sometimes we embellish joy to remember what love felt like.
Other times, we embellish pain to make sense of what once felt senseless.
Either way, the soul is editing â seeking to transform memory into meaning.
Consider our relationship with technology.
When cell phones arrived, we celebrated newfound freedom â mobility, accessibility, connection at our fingertips. But over time, the very tool that promised liberation became the tether that many are trying to release themselves from now. We miss the quiet of the landline, the boundaries that used to exist between âreachableâ and âresting.â
Itâs not the phone itself that holds the answer. Itâs the âfeelingâ of presence, of simplicity, of uninterrupted being within oneâs self, with oneâs time and with others.
That is what we are truly longing to reclaim â not the device (landline) or the decade it belonged to.
When we realize this, we understand that no time or object was ever the source of our peace. It was âour awarenessâ within that moment that made it feel sacred.
âłTime is our Teacher
Humanity evolves through rhythms and polarities, expansion and contraction, discovery and discernment. Every invention, every cultural shift, every âmistakeâ reveals more about who we are and what we value.
We donât need to go backward to recover what was lost. We are meant to integrate what was pure within the old and bring it forward, reimagined through conscious awareness.
We can ask ourselves:
âWhat feeling, what energy was I touching then that Iâve forgotten how to access now?â
That single question turns nostalgia into evolution.
đBringing the Past Home to the Present
When we find ourselves missing âhow things used to be,â we can pause and listen inward.
And Ask:
⢠What was I truly feeling in that time that I desire again now?
⢠How can I express that quality in a new way, here in this now?
⢠What does freedom or connection mean to me today?
When we stop chasing time, we can start embodying timelessness.
The good old days live not behind us, but through us â in every choice to be awake, grateful, and Present Now.
The Beauty of Now
Itâs easy to idealize what once was, but there is so much we can only appreciate because of where we stand today.
This time â this now â holds its own sacred gifts:
â˘The ability to connect across oceans in seconds.
â˘Meeting people you otherwise probably wouldnât have met.
â˘The rise of awareness, healing, and shared remembrance.
â˘Finding your âtribeâ so to speak. â˘Sometimes we donât live with or near the ones that âget usâ in the spiritual or esoteric sense. They may be an ocean away.
â˘The collective yearning for truth and peace that is reshaping the human heart.
When we realize itâs not the âgood old daysâ we seek, but the âspirit within themâ, we become free. We can bless the past for what it gave us, release it with love, and let its essence breathe new life into the present moment.
The past becomes memory.
The now becomes living memory, which is the same spirit reborn in new form.
Thereâs one thing we can count on - everything is always shifting and changing. We are not meant to rewind the story â we are meant to ârewrite its vibrationâ.
The past was never better; it was simply another layer of remembering.
Each era, each invention, each heartbreak and discovery is part of the same eternal learning - how to be more conscious in how we create, connect, and care for ourselves and others.
And when we finally realize that the feeling weâve been longing for was never truly lost â only perceived as distant â something profound can shift. We begin to see that what we loved about then is still available now.
Nothing true ever disappears. Every experience, every joy, every sacred moment leaves an energetic imprint in our field â waiting to be reactivated through awareness. When we remember that, we discover that lifeâs beauty isnât bound to time at all.
We can carry forward what was meaningful, while opening to what is emerging.
We can have the best of both â the wisdom of memory, and the wonder and curiosity of the present. It doesnât have to be this or that, rather it is this and that.
This is the freedom we seek:
the realization that what we miss has never truly gone. It lives within us, ready to be re-created through awareness and love.
âď¸Journal Prompts
1. When I think of a time I wish I could return to, what feeling was I actually experiencing then?
2. Where in my life now can I cultivate that same feeling in a new way?
3. What âgood old dayâ quality is ready to be reborn through me â freedom, simplicity, joy, connection?
4. What do I most appreciate about this era, this now?
5. How can gratitude for the present moment expand my ability to experience the same spirit I once loved?
Closing Reflection
May this reflection serve as a gentle reminder that remembrance is not regression.
We are eternal beings, forever evolving, forever invited to rediscover what we once knew â through the lens of the now.
We are not here to go back.
We are here to bring forward the frequencies that once made us feel most alive â and to live them, consciously, in this beautiful, ever-changing moment of now.
With love and clarity
PattiAnn, Energy Worker & Soul Guide Walking the path of remembrance, and guiding others home to theirs. đđ