Nostalgia is a powerful thing. That longing, wistful affection for days gone by snags all of us time and again and often brings with it a nod to a happy time or place. What nostalgia makes us feel can’t always be explained with words, much to my chagrin (though, clearly I’ll try!). I’ve been thinking about nostalgia lately as frivolous news of the Friends Reunion broke, causing endless excitement among long time fans of the series who could not BE more excited! It’s no surprise this kind of event brings about such widespread anticipation (and in case the blog titles didn’t give it away, I’m a huge fan!). People who watched the show in its heyday, remember it fondly as funny and iconic. It was and still is both of those things. But that alone isn’t always enough to stoke nostalgia in our hearts. People aren’t waiting in an impatient frenzy simply to hear Chandler’s sarcasm again or to finally put the “we were on a break” debate to rest or even to hear iconic phrases like, “I know!” and “How you doin?” again. Fans will remember and enjoy all that. But what makes the reunion idea itself so special is that feeling of nostalgia. Of being transported back to a time when it wasn’t so much that you watched Friends in college, but that you remember watching it sitting around a tiny dorm-room TV laughing together. Or maybe it was the first show you watched as a married couple just starting out. Or while going through a rough time in life, you caught endless reruns on TBS that brought a smile to your face to lift you up one half-hour at a time. That’s the power of things that connect us back to the past. It’s the ability to transport us back to old familiar feelings and make us say, wow, those were good days. It’s that urge to text your friend because you just watched the one with Ross’s paste pants and it still kills you every time. It’s that feeling that no matter how much time passes or what life may throw at you, there will always be something so very simple that has the power to give you good feelings and a bit of joy. And maybe Friends was never your thing. Maybe your show was Golden Girls, or Seinfeld, or Game of Thrones, or Cheers, or The Dick Van Dyke Show, or Fresh Prince of Bel Air, or any one of a hundred other iconic shows that aren’t really all that important in the grand scheme of life, except for the fact that they leave an imprint on our hearts sometimes. And that imprint can last a lifetime, not just because the show was funny or heartwarming, but because we remember those we shared it with. We look back to those times with a fond remembrance and hearty gratitude that there is sometimes a good deal of meaning in frivolous things. Nostalgia lets us remember why things like Pivot!, English trifle, he’s her lobster, wack PlayStation, 18-page letters (front and back!), and Wooopah! are not only hilarious, but comforting reminders of days we will always remember in years that went by too fast.
Elizabeth Banak Books 