What if you could go back to yesterday?
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” - Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
Today we’re flooded with moving images at a rate and depth we could never imagine in my Gen X youth. We live in a culture obsessed with capturing and sharing every moment online. We’re inundated with carefully curated images and performances posted to the world across social media.
It wasn’t always like that.
Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, my childhood and young adult years were captured on film, which was not inexpensive to purchase or process. Video was rarer, captured first with silent Super8 movie cameras and later the bulky camcorder.
Today’s box contains VHS and camcorder cassettes.
The moving box packed between 13 - 30 years ago might have been opened at some point in the past as we’ve had access to a VCR off and on in this house. But there’s been no way to view the older camcorder tapes from the floral “keepsake” box. The camcorder itself is packed – somewhere – however I suspect the required power implements (battery, battery charger, power cords) are long since jumbled into a bin or box containing multitudes of the same, with no easy way of identifying which belongs to what.
For the last fifteen years, I’ve answered the question “What do you want for your anniversary” with – I really want to have our 1996 wedding video digitized so I can watch it again. For some reason this has never happened.
A few months ago I purchased a Groupon for a digitization service. You may know the type - they send a box (containing an empty box) with instructions and barcode labels. You affix the labels, bubble wrap your most potentially precious unknown memories, and ship them off to be digitized. Some weeks later an email arrives with a gateway to the long forgotten unedited past available for viewing and sharing online.
Discerning which cassettes to send is like a box of chocolates. You’re not quite sure what you’re gonna get. Most of our VHS and 8mm cassettes are generically labeled. If you’re over 45, you probably remember having those “tv shows” cassettes where you’d record your favorite shows so you could watch them later. These phased out completely with the advent of DVR and/or streaming services.
The earliest labeled VHS cassette I found was from 1986. Nearly forty years ago. Did I really just write that? The rest span the late 1980s, early 1990s and continued to early 2004, which is probably when we made the investment in a digital camera.
What if you could go back in time and meet the younger you?
There’s a scene in A Christmas Carol where Ebeneezer Scrooge1 visits his childhood and young adult years with the Ghost of Christmas Past. Confronted with his younger self he sees how time changed him. If love is an action, he has not flexed that muscle in many years.
Watching my memories is my own visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. Some of the videos I remember – high school drill team shows, football halftime routines, and my wedding. Others, such as a candid camera Thanksgiving 1992, are a complete surprise to me. I’m fascinated to see my younger self, my parents, siblings, and friends. Wow, how young we are. How loud we are. Still are, my husband says.
(This 12-second clip is loud…. don’t say I didn’t warn you. Check your volume.)
“These are but shadows of the things that have been.” – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
The camera resurrects family no longer with us. My maternal grandfather, both grandmothers, my mother-in-law, her identical twin, and their mother. We said goodbye ten, twenty, nearly thirty years ago, yet here I see them again talking, laughing, being.
In these videos, my parents are younger than I am today. That comes as a bit of a shock. I cringe watching my husband and I as new parents; thank goodness we figured it out by the time the second baby arrived. With apologies to my oldest for suffering all our “what do we do now?” moments.
If you could go back in time – would you?
How long would you stay?
What memory would you choose to revisit?
This post was inspired by a Lewis Carroll quote, “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” But I think there’s some use in going back to yesterday as long as we aren’t living in yesterday. Yes, we were different people then. However, that person is the root that made us who we are today. It can be nice to visit, to remember, to appreciate the good, the sad, even the cringy moments.
But what’s important is that we don’t linger there too long. We don’t get too caught up in the memory of who we were then and what our life was like. Or as another wise character said, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.” (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.) Instead, we focus on the lessons learned and use them going forward from this moment.
The best Ebeneezer Scrooge is played by the magnificent Sir Patrick Stewart! It’s the best version ever made and you can’t change my mind!