Don't live your life in the past

IT is inevitable that as we grow up we are slowly consumed by a sense of beautiful nostalgia ... a longing for the days that seemed easier and carefree. It is often at the threshold of change, that we look back and revel in the comforts of a well-worn past.

After 12 years of schooling, satisfied by the anesthetic familiarity, one can't help but ruefully smile at the tranquil existence of a time when colouring outside the lines was the biggest crisis; blue crayon or red crayon? The decisions we had to make.

Looking out of the rain-flecked window, the agonising screech of wiper blades in rhythmic chorus in the background, I look at the streets being pounded relentlessly by raindrops, the sheets of water cut through by wary tyres, the luminous tail-lights of cars artistically smudged by the crystals of rain running down the pane in streaks.

I remember being eight, crafting paper boats and sailing them in the giant puddles that had gathered at our street's corner. I remember exclaiming in awe, pressing my face against my bedroom window, pointing to the rainbow arching across the sky. I remember my childhood like a weathered series of polaroids - slightly obscured around the edges, but still, moments frozen in time.

Childhoods are often romanticised - probably much like I'm doing now. Often, our childhoods aren't really as glorious as we remember. We like to sketch it that way, so we can look back, tell warming stories and then crib, with deep-set depression, about the pressures of the present. The truth is, having lived through a time, makes it feel a lot easier and uncomplicated. It's not that it was, it just seems that way.

So we bathe in the nostalgic sunshine, a relief from the harsh reality of rumbling thunderstorms and crackling lightning. But 'It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live' - to quote the infamous and imagined Albus Dumbledore, carrying the wisdom of J K Rowling. And, the wizened old warlock cannot be truer.

For living in the past, we loose ourselves in time; and time stops altogether, we're stuck in a time when nothing can be gained, nothing more can be said.

It's like staring at a pretty picture of an imaginary place, it will give you nothing but a terrible yearning for something unattainable.

So, even though you find yourself longing for the days of rickety swings and chocolate-smudged fingers, remember there is much more of life to experience, to relish, to treasure. Memories are relics of a time once lived. Do not stop living for a life that is now dead.

For the present now, is past soon, to be tucked away like old photographs, creased and browned, at the back of a dusty cupboard, to be unearthed with delight, years later by a new generation, on some rather dull, rainy day.