Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?
Interpretation
The quote questions the notion that aging should bring about a sense of peace or contentment, while also pondering the purpose of nostalgia.
In this quote, Julian Barnes reflects on the nature of aging and the expectations society holds about it. He challenges the idea that growing older should naturally lead us to feel comfortable and rewarded for our experiences. Instead, he questions the evolutionary function of nostalgia, suggesting that clinging to past memories may not necessarily serve a beneficial purpose and that life does not inherently reward us for merit. This introspective view invites readers to reconsider their assumptions about aging and the emotions that accompany it.
In practice
A speaker reflecting on human experience in a philosophy class.
(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.
It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.
But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.
And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61]
Every love story is a potential grief story.
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
The psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one's control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one's free will.
Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian.
Be careful not to turn others' lives into the mold for your own...we have a # God who is a # Creator not a # Duplicator .
A society that does not value its older people denies its roots and endangers its future. Let us strive to enhance their capacity to support themselves for as long as possible and, when they cannot do so anymore, to care for them.
The streets lie, the sidewalks lie, everything lies_x000D_ _x000D_ You can try and read it but you're gonna get it wrong...all wrong _x000D_ _x000D_ The summer evenings burn and melt and the nights glitter but you're gonna get it wrong _x000D_ _x000D_ And it's gonna sink its teeth into your flesh and pull you to the bottom.
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