Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny
But now you're sad, your mama's mad
And your papa says he knows that I don't have any money
A former colleague posted the two images above on the book of faces at the weekend and his stream was filled with warm, nostalgic comments as a result.
The windows are part of the old Victorian mill building in which the local radio station where we all worked was located, from the 70s through the turn of the century. The station's not there anymore, it's moved twice in the intervening years before being dissolved into the generic nationalised slush that all local radio has become in recent years. About the only thing "local" about it these days is the breakfast show and the adverts. It's even losing its identity in April, to take on the same name as a million other "local" radio stations across the world, because there's no longer anything to differentiate it from them.
But this post isn't about the sad death of local radio... it's about the glorious times in its past. Those windows at the top of the page represent that. The building in question has been converted into luxury flats these days... I know, they don't look particularly luxury, do they? But this is Bradford we're talking about.
Only life you ever knew
Looking back at what you used to do
Pass a dump along the road,
Rearview mirror turn it into gold
Among those reminiscing, the comments included people talking about how the corridors sometimes smelled of sewage (the station was in the basement), how the windows in question often got bricks through them, and, of course, The Ghost (actually, those comments came from me). But despite all that, what got to me was how much love people felt for the old place...
"What a place that was... so many memories!""I'd love to have a look inside...""Such fond memories, wish I could rewind time.""The place dreams began! We were all so lucky to be there!""Feels like a lifetime ago since we were there.""And that building still hosted the greatest days of our lives."
I certainly have some happy memories of that old radio station - it was a great job with (mostly) great people. Over the years I was there, it gradually went downhill... as all things do. That's entropy for you. I was there for 23 years, and for me the first ten or so were the best... yet some of those comments come from people who were only there in the second half of my time, and even after I'd gone. There are a number of things we can take from that - nostalgia is viewed through rose-tinted glasses, one person's Golden Days are another person's 'Meh' Months... but things are never as good as they were in the past. And yet, I also know I was miserable for a large part of my time there, and if you'd asked me then, I'd have said I was hoping my life would get a whole lot better when I was older.
This made me ask a question...
Do our brains give priority to happy memories?
To answer that, I turned to the American Psychological Association, who started by telling me that we actually have more happy times in our lives that sad ones, "because people seek out positive experiences and avoid negative ones." Beyond that, though...
The other process at work involves our memory system treating pleasant emotions differently from unpleasant emotions.Pleasant emotions have been found to fade more slowly from our memory than unpleasant emotions. One mechanism for this uneven fading may involve a process known as minimization. In order to return to our normal level of happiness, we try to minimize the impact of life events. This minimization process - which occurs biologically, cognitively and socially -- is usually stronger for negative events than for positive events.
However, this process doesn't work for everyone. In fact, if you're suffering depression, chances are it's because your unpleasant memories aren't fading as quickly as they should be. I wonder if that's linked to what we were talking about a couple of weeks back - how our emotions only last 90 seconds unless we choose to dwell on them, thereby creating moods which can go on and on.
"This implies that there is a tendency to 'deaden' the emotional impact of negative events relative to the impact of positive events," says a doctor who's researched this kind of stuff. "Such deadening occurs directly because people are motivated to view their life events in a relatively positive light."
Goldie & the Gingerbreads - Think About The Good Times
I take a kind of comfort from all this. And I'm glad the memories I have of my time in radio are largely good ones. Even some of the bad things that happened, I can now look back on and smile... or even laugh. Distance gives us clarity.
