“Good Old Days” Syndrome

Do you think that baseball players can’t hit nearly as well as they did when you were younger? Do you know that schools were much tougher when you attended? Are you sure cars were made so much better “back in the day”?

Well then you may suffer from “good old days” syndrome. “Good old days” syndrome is the tendency to look back on the past with nostalgia and forget about the reality of what went on. It often happens when we look at a future task and dismiss it by saying things like, “We used to have a great…” or “If we only could do it like we did back then.” It makes the past perfect and therefore leaves the future to do other than disappoint.

So is “good old days” syndrome a bad thing?

Well Ecclesiastes 7:10 tells us:

"Do not say, "Why is it that the former days were better than these?" For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this."

A wise person does not dwell on the mistakes or the success of the past but learns from them and moves on. He learns from the past but also adapts to the future. If we get stuck in the past, we never get improve. “Good old days” syndrome may make us sound like wisdom but it rarely gets us anywhere.

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Ecclesiastes 12:10

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