Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a bored New York lawyer from the midwest, we witness the whole thing... the mad parties of Mr Jay Gatsby, the reunion between said man and his lost love, Daisy Buchanan, the sweltering days of joy and intrigue, all leading, it would seem to a happy ending of deceit, love, and collusion.
About halfway through this novel, I wrote a journal entry about how I was feeling about life and time. I hadn't yet connected my feelings with the book I had been devouring, as my feeling predated the time I had first picked it up. The entry reads as follows.
January 1st
Time passes far too quickly for my liking. I can't keep up with it. I'm always a step behind or a mile in the future. How does one find now? Where is it? Is it meant to be easily grasped, or are there others like me who find "now" to be more concept than reality? I don't know, but I'm not sure how much it matters, so long as we all live to the fullest in which ever tense we find most appetising. I only wish I knew which one I wanted most, except I'm afraid that if I think about it too closely I will decide on the past, which is problematic, since one can never go back to what was before now. Perhaps if I look to the future now, I can arrange the perfect "now" for later on, when I can live fully without all this longing for what cannot be.
As nice as that still sounds to me, I realised soon after that I was falling directly into the trap that Jay Gatsby built for himself. He spent years wishing for the past, but knowing he couldn't go back, spent his time arranging a better "now" for the future. Perhaps sometimes it can work, but unfortunately for Mr Gatsby, all his years of pining and working to get Daisy back ended fruitlessly, and tragically he could never get back what he lost in his pursuit of that happiness he once had. He would have been far better off if he had seen that the past was the past, and chose to find a new life, a new dream.
As Nick tells Gatsby, we can never relive the past.
Daisy and Jay's love was truly beautiful when it first began, and some of the descriptions the author gives almost brought me to tears. But by the time the story takes place, that was only a beautiful memory, and no matter how much he wanted it, Gatsby could never pull those moments from the past into the future.
What I want, and what he needed, is to learn the skill of recalling happy memories with fondness, and looking upon them as a beautiful sculpture. Something to be held onto, looked at lovingly, and left alone.
These last months have been a journey of realising this through means that may seem quite silly - first the movie Inside Out, then the newest take on Cinderella, and finally F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby.
Inside-Out was to me, a very weighty and sad film. I enjoyed watching it, but I didn't like it. It showed so tangibly the way that the beautiful, happy memories of childhood and youth become so sorrowful and heavy, as they are filled with longing and nostalgia. I can't look back on my beautiful childhood in my home on K Street with joy, I only see it through tears of sadness, because I can never go back.
When I recently watched Cinderella, I was truly struck by something said near the end of the movie.
Ella has been locked in her room following the ball, and she knows that the prince will never find her to be his bride. But instead of bitterness and anger that she is being deprived of what she deserves, the narrator states this;
"Though Ella was sad, her spirit was not broken.
She knew that the ball, and her time with the prince, would become beautiful, distant memories, like those of her father and mother, and her golden childhood"
I sat in awe at this thought, of being able to look at the happiness of the past with joy, as you look at a beautiful painting that you love. There is no sadness in observing something truly beautiful, only delight. We do not cry when we see the Mona Lisa because we will never meet her, we simply smile, and enjoy the superior strokes of the master's brush. If only I could find a way to hold up my memories, and place them in a frame to look on with fondness, to see them as works of art to be enjoyed, not sorrows to be cried over.
I have a strong conviction that the day I learn to love the past but leave it behind will be the day I know what true enjoyment is, and the moment I learn to be fully present in the now.
