Never look back unless you are planning to go that way

Past events often take on an identity of their own, in retrospect. Each individual has their own perspective on the past, whether it is a particular time period, the decade of their birth or their own personal history.
[heading size=”18″]Romanticizing the past glorifies reality[/heading] Curled up in front of her laptop with the light of the screen gleaming upon her face, movies transport senior Safiyah Elkomy to another time period she would much rather reside in. Elkomy regularly watches “The Phantom of the Opera,” which is set in the mid to late 19th century, along with other movies based in past times to indulge in an ideal piece of the past. Through observing and admiring the stories and characters in the older and classical movies of previous times, Elkomy admits she would have much rather preferred to live in the past.
“I definitely love to romanticize about the past through old movies because I like just that time, the environment, their manners and just the way they lived in general. I would even prefer to live back then and I like to think that I ‘live’ in the past through the movies I watch because that way I can really just relive the past through those movies and feel like I am a part of that time and go to any time period really,” Elkomy said. “I definitely think that older movies are glamorized versions of the past, but honestly I like to think of them that way better.”
According to enterprisenews.com, people enjoy classic films because these movies take viewers back to a time when ‘values’ meant something, and random acts of kindness were widespread. Older films transport those watching to a time when America was strong and united, and when integrity, decency and honor were attributes of a great person, a hero. Because of these qualities, the site explains that when watching a classic film, one is able to “long for the lost society that the movie portrays.”
Movies aren’t the only triggers for individuals to romanticize about the past, Advanced Placement Psychology teacher Rachel Proffitt explained. If the past were a time of relaxation and enjoyment for a person, the individual tends to “get stuck” in the brighter times of their past, and assume their future is dimmer and bleak.
“Typically as people get older, they might want to go back a bit. It really is that people want to be a few years younger because maybe they feel like they were healthier or thinner back then, so that would make them wish to return to their past,” Proffitt said. “But if you’re content with where you are then there’s no real reason to necessarily go back. I do think a lot of the times people go back to the past to change something that they did. We get nostalgic, but I think as people get older they learn more that it probably really is just a question of rosy retrospection. We tend to think the past was great, but really if we went back it had its own struggles.”
These struggles can be difficult to recognize because often times, past events are recalled with rose-tinted glasses, thus making them seem so much better than anything happening in the present, according to the research conducted by Tory Higgins and Charles Stangor in a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1988. Their research points out that humans tend to think about the distant past more abstractly than they think about the present. Many of the specific things that are happening right now involve the petty annoyances that one has to deal with to navigate daily life. There are bills to be paid, stacks of laundry to be done, tests to be taken and errands to run.
When a person thinks about the past, those petty annoyances don’t come up because individuals generally recall the bigger events. They naturally remember things that left a greater imapct. So, all a person thinks about are the great times they had.
“When I was in school, everyone was like, ‘Weren’t the ‘60s great? Wouldn’t it be cool to go back?’” Proffitt said. “We romanticized the past because of all the fun things and even because we only kind of remembered it in pictures and media and you just kind of assume that what you see is how it felt, when really everybody was still just the same.”
When individuals look back on past events, they often know how they turned out, according to www.huffingtonpost.com. Uncertainty is stressful, and the present often feels less pleasant than the past because people are still waiting to find out how the various education and business ventures that are part of life now are going to work out.
However, junior Humera Lodhi disagrees with this concept, as she believes looking toward the future allows for increased development and success, whereas dwelling in the past causes a close-minded view of both oneself and the surrounding world.
“You can’t change the past, you can learn from the past I guess, but when you look towards the future it makes you work more towards what you have the potential to do in the future,” Lodhi said. “Even at a personal level, when I say something, maybe even as simple as ‘I want to get into college,’ it’ll make me want to work hard, and make me want to get good grades, and join extracurricular activities. So it will make me a better person and increase my work ethic now and benefit me in the present because I have a vision for the future and I am not dwelling on my past.”
With increased glorification of the past, Lodhi said individuals become too nostalgic and place the past on such a high pedestal. Lodhi explains she has heard people talk about how the past was so much better, but they often forget about all the negative things that occurred during previous time periods.
“People will look back to the ‘60s or something and think that there was so much less pollution or how much better it was, but then they don’t remember the racism or the struggle that people had to go through during that time,” Lodhi said. “I feel like people are always glorifying the past and make it out to be so much better, and say that our life right now sucks. But I think every time period is going to have different difficulties, but that doesn’t make any one time period better than the other. Nowadays we have all this new technology, and I’m sure it is going to be utilized badly, but that’s just a side effect of progression. That’s why I think looking back is so negative because you kind of lose hope in the future and you don’t try to make the future better because you are so stuck focusing on the past.”
Although she believes dwelling in the past can bring about negative implications, Lodhi said reminiscing about the past in moderation can bring benefits if individuals today are able to build off of the experiences they endured in the past.
“It’s easier to just say we were better off at that time, rather than thinking of all the problems that we may have faced back then our problems now, and realizing this is what I can do to use the resources that I have today that I didn’t have earlier in my life to make it better,” Lodhi said. “I know in the ‘90s the Green Movement was really big, so I should expand on that movement today, and use the technology we have like solar panels that we have now and didn’t have back then to bring about a new and more progressive Green Movement. Instead of trying to bring about a better change, people think it’s just easier to say the past was better and we are ruined now, and just leave it at that.”
With Lodhi’s mindset, Proffitt explains even more teenagers in this generation will be able to use inspiration from the past to bring about progression in their future and learn beneficial lessons. Providing individuals with a movement or a reason to look forward to their future allows for the opportunity to make your mark on the world, according to Proffitt.
“I feel like teenagers probably want to make their own mark on the world and that maybe just focusing on that is the key,” Proffitt said. “There’s always something that if you are looking for a purpose you can find it, it may not seem, as clear as, say the civil rights and Green movements in the past, but it didn’t seem that clear to people back then either. People were just doing it. They didn’t understand it as a movement necessarily, but rather as working towards the benefit of their future.”
Though Elkomy enjoys transporting herself to the past via the many classic movies she watches, she does not think she is necessarily stuck in the past. Rather, Elkomy views her actions as another more personal way, aside from societal movements, of taking inspiration from the past to build for her future.
“Since I want to become an actress one day, I do definitely look forward to the future, and I want to make the best of it,” Elkomy said. “But I take inspiration for my future from the past. I want my acting and the movies I want to be a part of in my future to be like all the old movies that I watch. I mean the past isn’t something that I feel that I need to re-live but it is a world I need to escape to sometimes.”
While Elkomy has found satisfaction and success in looking back on life, Lodhi finds she is more content with contemplating what is to come. She explains if she had focused too much on a bad grade she had received sophomore year, she wouldn’t have been able to move on and accomplish all the experiences she has today. Lodhi takes pride in her exciting mentoring experiences she has had this year, and explains she has this opportunity and others like it because she looks to her college future and takes the necessary steps to achieve her future goals.
“I know for myself at least, when I look towards the future, I become more innovative. I am going to increase my creativity, and I’m going to make the world a better place, I think,” Lodhi said, “all because I focus on what I can do instead of what I should have done.”
By Manal Salim
[heading size=”18″]Regret influences decisions of the future[/heading] Regret is an important part in how one lives life, even though the person may be far removed from the initial event. It can cause people to doubt themselves, always looking back and wondering, ‘What if I did it differently?’ Even seemingly minor choices – or lack thereof – made in childhood can affect people in high school and beyond.
Senior Joanna Zhang made a decision years ago, years before reaching an age at which such decisions can be made with rational thought. Zhang regrets not learning her ancestral language while she was young.
“There was a period of time that I refused to speak Chinese for the longest time,” Zhang said. “My parents sent me to Chinese school, but I refused to actually try because I thought it wasn’t cool.”
Such regrets are the most common form, according to a study by Thomas Giloviqh and Victoria Husted Medvec at Cornell University. They found 54 percent of people said their largest regret was one of inaction. The three most common ‘regrets of inaction’ were education-related like that of senior Nate Horvit, who made his way through his ninth grade year without considering the consequences.
“When I was a freshman, I didn’t really understand that my grades and decisions I made then would impact me when I was applying for colleges and so my GPA was kind of shot after my freshman year,” Horvit said. “I didn’t even know what a 4.0 was or anything like that, so I would have liked to have had that dawn on me and understand and be more focused on my academics freshman year and not just senior year when I care about getting into college.”
By not committing fully to his education in ninth grade, Horvit said he eventually limited his post-secondary options, though he did not realize it at the time. Despite his increased focus on education during the last three years, the damage his lack of understanding caused is in the past.
Only 12 percent of those in the Cornell study reported feeling regretful about something they had done, a ‘regret of action.’ Almost every person in that category rued some relationship decision, mainly. The study labeled any regret that was not clearly one of action or inaction as ‘indeterminate.’ Of the people that regretted an action or inaction, rather than an ‘indeterminate’ regret, only 37 percent wished they hadn’t done something. Sixty-three percent wished they had acted, wished they had seized the day. Like Horvit and Zhang, a majority of people look back on some event in the past and realize that if they had acted, rather than been inactive, they could’ve changed their lives for the better.
“I think about [not taking ninth grade seriously] when I am applying for colleges, filling out their applications or things like that,” Horvit said. “I found it a little bit harder. A lot of the places I couldn’t really get into would be available [had I worked harder that year.]”
Sophomore Brooke Herigon also looks back on her education, but a little farther back than Horvit. Herigon regrets letting schoolwork interfere with enjoyment, rather than saving that trade-off until high school.
“[I regret] all of the nights I stayed up so late working on my homework in the fourth and fifth grade because I [had dance lessons] until nine every night,” Herigon said. “I made all of my school work too much of a priority when I should’ve been having fun.”
While of course Herigon cannot fix the past, she does try to approach academics and social activities with a more balanced lens. Despite how much some people attempt to shut out or ignore their regrets, the lingering memory of those experiences affect how one will act in the future.
“There’s not really a lot I can do now. I can’t really go back and fix it,” Horvit said. “But in the future – like freshman year of college for instance – I’ll be more motivated.”
Although mistakes like Horvit’s result in lessons that only the one experiencing it feels, other regrets prompt people to change others as well. Dr. Neal Roese, from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, believes that regret, unlike hindsight bias, causes increased care in later choices. Roese has written papers on this facet of psychology.
“Regret tends to make people more cautious and careful in their future decisions,” Roese said. “The immediate sting of a regrettable decision makes you want to shift gears to safe option. On the other hand, hindsight bias is connected with overconfidence. If you feel like you knew it all along, you might be more likely to take risks.”

While she does not find herself more apt to take extensive risks in the future, Zhang now considers planning to ensure that her own children do not fall under the same impressions she did so they, too, do not have to experience her regret.
“We are learning in psychology about how it’s hard to master a language and be fluent in it [when beginning learning] past adolescence,” Zhang said. “It makes me think about about how I want to raise my kids and whether I want to raise them learning a second language, especially now that China is an emerging world power, [Chinese] would be a particularly useful language to know.”
No matter whether a regret is a result of action or inaction, or whether it causes a trend toward caution or one toward risk, regret is undeniably intertwined with human nature, especially in the volatile world of the teenager.
“If regret is a reflection of our goals and ideals, then it’s probably a good thing that we feel regret, because it gives us feedback that allows us to make changes for the better,” Roese said. “Regret is a side effect of trying to get the most out of life.”
By Brett Stover
[heading size=”18″]Millennials contemplate decade in history[/heading] Born in 1995, senior Megan Kelly is part of the last generation born in the 20th century. With such a status, she believes she and her classmates see themselves as ’90s kids but doesn’t know if they are qualified to identify themselves with this generation.
Although Kelly said she doesn’t have clear-cut memories of the events of the ’90s, she still thinks she should be able to consider herself a ’90s kid. In her opinion, she and some of her older peers have enough of an idea of how the last few years of the decade felt like to be part of that generation.
“I think if you were born in the ’90s, you are a ’90s kid,” Kelly said. “I don’t remember much of the culture from the ’90s, but I have good memories of being a child and pictures of what my clothing was. I remember a lot more from this decade than the ’90s.”
Although Kelly remembers much more from the 2000s, she can still identify and relate to some of the ’90s relics that bring nostalgia to those who have memories of the decade. However, she doesn’t believe she and her peers can possibly compare the two decades.
“I did love the fashion [of the ’90s] and that is coming back in style today,” Kelly said. “I think all decade have their ups and downs, but I have enjoyed my life so far, so I can’t really say if one decade was better.”
Unlike Kelly, freshman Maryam Bledsoe doesn’t think she is a ’90s kid. Just like many of her peers, Bledsoe was born in 1999 and she considers herself part of the 2000s more than the ’90s. However, she has trouble associating with her younger peers who were born in that decade.
“I grew up on 2000s stuff, but at the same time, I’m on the older edge of that group,” Bledsoe said. “So at the same time, I don’t really identify with the younger people. So I feel like I’m kind of in the middle.“
The reason Bledsoe doesn’t agree with some of her classmates who say they can be considered a part of the ’90s is because she knows they can’t have clear and cherished memories of that decade since they were all born in the last few years of the ’90s.
“I do [feel left out] because I have no idea what the ‘Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ is or whatever else happened in the ’90s,” Bledsoe said. “I don’t know, so I can’t [relate to] that.”
While Bledsoe and Kelly were born in the ’90s and don’t remember much from that part of their lives, RBHS Science teacher Kerri Graham clearly remembers the ’90s and therefore counts herself as part of that generation. Graham graduated from high school in 1996 and from college in 2001, so she spent her teen years in the ’90s.
“I would say that I’m a ’90s kid because I was a teenager and a young adult in the ’90s, so that kind of molded me,” Graham said. “I’m kind of a prodigy of both the ’80s and the ’90s, but when it comes to high school and pop culture and whatnot, it was the ’90s for me.”
Although Graham sees some clear differences between today’s high school students and what she remembers of her own high school peers, she still believes the main problems they dealt with as high schoolers remain the same.
“I don’t necessarily know if my life was simpler than what [high schoolers’] lives are right now. But I think one thing that was simpler was communication,” Graham said. “It was simpler when you couldn’t be in communication all of the time. The fact that we have cell phones and all of the stuff that keeps us in contact all the time, that wasn’t there.”
Growing up in the ’90s, Graham didn’t have the luxury of a computer or a smartphone until much later in her life. Since she didn’t have social media to spend her time with, Graham believes these technological differences between her generation and today’s teenagers divide their lifestyles.
“I didn’t get my first cell phone until I graduated from college and actually started working here at Rock Bridge. Pay phones were still huge. If I had to get in contact with my parents we used pay phones,” Graham said. “At school, my parents trying to contact me when I was at school during the day, that did not happen. It only happened if it was an emergency and they had to call the office to get a hold of me.”
The lack of social technology allowed Graham and her peers to grow up in a much different atmosphere than today’s teenagers. According to a 2013 research study published by Pew Research Center, 78 percent of teenagers own a cell phone, and 47 percent of those individuals own smartphones.
Even though the rise of technology has brought people closer together, Graham believes that it is extremely difficult to cut off social interactions in order for high school students to relax from time to time, and that is the main difference between her generation and today’s iPhone yielding teens.
“I think [the lack of communication] allowed me as a student to sometimes escape when I needed escape from my social life, which I think is probably harder to do now,” Graham said. “When it came to my life as a whole, as a high school student, compared to [today] I think I was dealing with the same issues [today’s students] are dealing with for the most part … it’s just that the things around us have changed a little bit.”
Since Graham witnessed the culture of the ’90s, she considers herself to be a ’90s kid along with others in her generation. However, she doesn’t feel that high school students today can have enough cherishable memories of that time to say the same.
“To me, being a ’90s kid means you remember the ’90s. So for me, for example, I was born in ’78. I wasn’t a kid of the ’70s, I’m not a prodigy of the ’70s, I’m of the ’80s and the ’90s,” Graham said. “I think whoever was born at the end of the ’90s are more a product of the 2000s and the teens, in my opinion.”
Bledsoe agrees with Graham and believes she and her peers shouldn’t be able to think of themselves as ’90s kids because most of her classmates were born in the last few years of the decade and therefore have no solid memories of ’90s culture.
“I guess [some people] think being born in the ’90s is the same as having memories,” Bledsoe said. “They think that just because they were born in that generation, they qualify to associate with that group, when they don’t because they most likely don’t remember anything from that [time period] and they can’t elaborate on what happened in the ’90s.”
Afsah Khan