It’s official. After 4 months of no travel, 1 conference cancelled and 3 others converted to virtual, numerous workshops cancelled, BUT 3 amazing customers of ours choosing to do their Driving Results programs virtually, I’m resigned to the reality that I’m no longer The Road Warrior.
It became real when I moved my Southwest Airlines app from my home screen. No sense having it there anymore. I have no travel scheduled. None. I miss being The Road Warrior.
But in reality, I don’t.
This week I did a little research on Nostalgia. It’s something most of us are experiencing right now.
We miss our co-workers. We miss our jobs. We miss movie theaters. We miss going to the mall. We miss going un-masked. We miss the days when mask-wearing wasn’t a political statement. We miss what we were doing just one year ago. Planning vacations. Sending kids off to camps. Watching live sports. Going to church. Having no shortages in the grocery store.
And we think about the “new normal” while lamenting our old lives.
It’s not healthy. And if we’re not careful, we’ll never be able to adapt to a life that’s different than we know it.
When we read or hear the word nostalgia, we often think of concepts such as grief, sadness, or melancholy. We associate this term with a loss that causes us great discomfort. Nostalgia is a feeling that invades us when we think of the past. In fact, it comes from Greek, “nostos” that means return and “algos” that means pain.
Psychologists agree that there are two types of nostalgia:
- Restorative refers to the type where you try to reconstruct or relive the way things were in the past.
- Reflective refers to longing and yearning feelings while accepting that the past is the past.
Reflective seems normal and healthy. Restorative is what impels 55 year-old men to color their hair, take testosterone shots, and wear clothing that’s either ultra-hip or decidedly-1980’s.
Now that we’ve all been ripped out of our old routines, it’s going to mean we have to make a tough choice in moving forward.
Restorative means we’ll try to recapture our old normal. By any means possible. And it won’t work. The past is gone…never to return.
Reflective means we can look back and mourn our old lives, but make the choice to adapt to the new ones.
In my case, I had to think about my old life on the road. I prided myself on my Southwest Airlines A-List Preferred status. My drink coupons. My Hilton Diamond status. My National Car Executive status. I was The Road Warrior. I looked down on the casual travelers, the vacationers, the novices that couldn’t use CLEAR or TSA Pre-check. I loved having James greet me early by name for breakfast at the O’Charley’s at BNA. It was fun having Michelle call me by name at the Homewood Suites in Southington, CT.
But those days are gone now.
And it helps me to remember what I hated most about those days. Getting up at 2:15 AM to get the first flights out at BNA and BDL. Novices in the TSA line taking the coins out of their pockets and placing them in the bin one-by-one. Getting to the National Car rental and finding only mini-vans. Having someone in the room above mine jumping up and down raising hell in the middle of the night.
It’s funny, but I traveled as much as I could, to maintain the status, to keep me traveling, not enjoying any of it, to make sure I could have points to travel on a vacation that I didn’t want to take, since I was so sick of being gone every week.
So rather than do the Restorative Nostalgia, I’m just going to be Reflective.
My old life is over. Conferences and workshops are virtual now. There won’t be any public speaking or in-person workshops for the foreseeable future.
And I’m choosing to be ok with it. I can go to my office in Dickson, TN and shoot video, record podcasts, and do Sketch & Seminars and virtual training sessions. I’ll have time to work out every morning, eat healthier, drink less alcohol, and sleep in my own bed.
The new normal is normal.
So what about you? I think we all need to take time to mourn our old lives. That’s the closure we need. Then, it’s time to move on.
Maybe Clint Eastwood summed it up best in The Bridges of Madison County:
“The old dreams were good dreams, they didn’t work out, but glad I had them.”
This week, let’s all come to terms with our new normal. Reflect on the past, and embrace the future.
I’m struggling with it, but will push through. Will you join me?