We need to view the past as a book to be learned from, not a place we want to go. If we learn from it the right way, then we find the things that were most noble or choice-worthy about our past, individually or collectively. And then talk about how to recover that in a new fashion that takes us to places we couldn’t go otherwise.
Look, I’m nostalgic about times that I know I was miserable at the time, but I feel nostalgic about them now. It’s just the way our mind relates—in a way, it’s a good things—it helps us put into perspective things we didn’t appreciate at the time, but it’s also very risky.
—Mayor Pete Buttigieg