I WAS hit with childhood memories while watching my brother play an old-school JRPG (Japanese Role-Playing Game).
It was a discounted game at the PlayStation store and happened to be the sequel to the very first JRPG I had played almost 18 years ago (yes, I am that old already). Watching him navigate the action prompts and blazing across the world of Filgaia caused me to remember my gamer days, when I would marathon six to eight hours every day of the weekend because I wasn’t allowed to use the PlayStation on weekdays.
I’m normally not a sentimental person, but this JRPG nostalgia caused me to wish that I had been transported back to the early 2000s. A good time for my friends and me was holing up in one of our houses (we took turns every so often to host each other) and go through games (and bags of Ruffles and Lay’s potato chips) together. Girls were as foreign to us as a Mayan calendar (nobody wanted to get cooties), and we were all best buddies in the #gamerlife.
Now it’s been a while since I’ve met some of those gamer buddies of mine, and some I haven’t seen since graduating from college—I do feel a little melancholic whenever I reminisce the dissolution of our gamer group.
Nostalgia can be a double-edged sword; it’s not wrong to recall better days past, but it can be grievous on our part to feel like we want to stay there forever. Come on, who among us don’t wish sometimes that we were 10 again? To have no worries apart from “what flavor of ice cream do I eat now?” or “Aw, shucks, I missed Rurouni Kenshin on AXN!?”
It’s good to revisit these memories from time to time, but it’s wrong to make camp and live in these memories forever. I know a few people whose biological age don’t match their maturity level partially because they aren’t willing (or are terrified) to grow up yet. But the world doesn’t care about that; it keeps spinning and won’t wait for us to play catch-up.
Although a part of me pines for the “gamer days,” the other part of me self-assures that I’ve come a long way since then. Had I stayed there, I would have never taken responsibility for my health (who has time to exercise and die-t?). I would have never learned to talk to girls (I still don’t know how to). And I would have never gotten this writing gig (level 100 waits for no one, not even my editor). And nostalgia also shows me areas of improvements: reconnecting with my gamer buddies (I stink at this).
The nostalgia days of Final Fantasy, Xenogears, and Wild ARMs will always bring a smile on my face.
But part of #adulting means allocating my waking hours to better, productive use instead of trying to farm enough items to build Ultima Weapon (gamers will know what I’m talking about).