Nostalgia and Wisdom: Lessons from Sweet Memories

It's funny how the things we have a lifelong aversion to, return to us as our teacher.

This morning, I set out for my 2 mile walk along an Arkansas county highway that is near my late mother's and stepfather's home.

As I was mid-way into my walk, the early morning humid air carried the scent of ripening muscadines.

A muscadine is a wild grape that grows around here, and as a child, I was repulsed by the smell.

My mother used to make muscadine jelly, and my job was to go out and pick them before the snakes and birds got them.

The smell of a ripe muscadine is singular. It is so sweet and musty that people either love them or hate them.

I'm a hater, usually.

But today, that first whiff of muscadines in the summer hit me like a freight train as memories of my childhood flooded my mind.

As I was walking through the smell and memories, it occurred to me that even back then, my body reacted to too much sweetness violently.

Today, I've gone about 4 years without consuming sugar. I believe that the Guttate psoriasis I struggle with is bacterial and yeast driven.

I'm just one of those people that has to take in sweetness through my other senses than that of taste, or take it in through natural means, like an occasional piece of good fruit like an apple.

What nourishes can also overwhelm, and what delights us, in excess, can make us sick.

I believe life asks us to discern the right dose of anything that we allow into our being.

Sweetness in any form is best if handled with respect, and I have come to believe that our life is our medicine.

It's always teaching and course-correcting if we are awake to its gentle nudges.

If I consume too much sugar, it makes my skin itch, and crowds out what can be beneficial for the other micro-organisms that hitch a ride with me on this journey.

The little gluttons in the bacteria world that consume too much sugar can cause a lot of dysbiosis in our guts!

I think it can also be said that too much sugary sweetness from others can also make our skin crawl, if they are doing it because they are people-pleasers, or fear conflict, when sometimes, a little conflict is warranted when something needs to be corrected.

True relationship with others, and ourselves, requires a balance of sweetness with honesty, depth, and some bitterness, too.

A diet of only sugar, whether from food or from people, is not sustainable, and that's where I come to a cross-roads with any nostalgic experiences that happens as I get older.

I don't want to ever live in the past. I don't want to sugar-coat my past experiences, either, when I'm remembering how things were.

That's a land I can never return to, so I try not to bitch too much about how my now is not like my then.

Like my walk this morning, I'm reminded that when I walk through my past due to a smell or other sensory prompt, to take the sweetness with a dose of bitterness, too, and not just focus on what was good.

Nostalgia can result in an endless loop of wishing you were living in the land of what used to be, instead of transforming those memories into the wisdom that can help you NOW.

As I was walking, I breathed in the sweet smells-- and as I moved forward, I released what wasn't beneficial to me now, and breathed in the new insight that counts as earned wisdom.

A morning walk is becoming one of my essentials in life. You can learn so much as you travel across a landscape.

Random fact about me: One of my favorite animals is the donkey. I don't know why, but I love them and wish I wasn't allergic to farm animals otherwise I would have one.