Oct 14, 2026–Were you ever aware you were living in a special time, as you were living it?
Perhaps it was watching a sunset. Or while holding a baby. Or marching in a halftime show.
My first experience with this was when I was 9 years old. We were at our neighbor’s farm on the next hill over from us. I don’t remember the occasion. Sometimes neighbors just gathered to share casseroles and swap stories.
My dad and some farmers were standing around the bed of a 1950s Ford pickup truck. They were all wearing overalls and white T-shirts. They leaned on the sides of the truck, some with one leg propped up on a bumper. The talk was about weather, crops, those new-fangled Thermos jugs, an off-color anecdote. A few earthy swears were dropped, even by my dad, who didn’t do that in front of us kids.
Even in my limited life experience, I had the feeling I was witnessing a slice of time and history from another dimension. A small part of me realized this moment would never happen again, forever. It was a glimpse into the adult world, but a world that would not exist by the time I was that adult.
I learned recently there is an actual phrase for this feeling: Preemptive Nostalgia. It’s when you realize the era you are living in is fodder for future memories. That one day you swill look back on this time and realize it was wonderful and irreplaceable. On A Way With Words podcast they described it as “homesickness for a place you haven’t left yet.”
Look at what you are doing right now with any young person in your life, whether kids, students, or random strangers. Someday, this inconsequential activity you are engaged in will fossilize into an indelible memory for them, one of the best of their lives.
I still think about Mr. Morgan, an old man who used to sit on his porch at the small house next to us. When we saw him out on his porch, we would wander over to visit with him in between digging in the sandbox or playing freeze tag. I don’t remember what we talked about, but he listened. And smiled.
To him, we were just a bundle of noisy neighbor kids.
To us, he was an anonymous old guy. His existence to us began and ended when he stepped in or out of his front door.
We had no idea if he had family, friends, other old men he played cards with. Sometimes we took him cookies our sisters baked. Then we ran off to play. It happened 50 years ago. But I still think about him. I hope his spirit knows he lives on in the mind of men now older than he was when we thought he was old.
Preemptive nostalgia changes the way you experience life when you walk through it imagining every single interaction will be a memory for someone, someday. Your off-hand remark might become a golden nugget of wisdom they will share through generations. Or at least recount at your funeral.
I wonder if time is stationary, and everything in our lives is happening simultaneously and always. Time isn’t moving. We are moving, experiencing life like a homecoming parade. If we concentrate, we can join the parade at any point, past or future, and re-experience the same emotions and sensations.
Maybe we already are in heaven. But we only arrive when we realize it.