We Romanticized the Past Because the Present Is Too Loud

Muhammed Ali Murtaza

January,05: Have you ever just laid back on a chair, AirPods on, doing nothing quietly listening to your old, unorganized playlist on shuffle? You have no idea what will play next. For a moment, you’re living in 2025, and then the very next song an old one comes on and takes you to a completely different world. It feels as if everything has softened. You fade into a quieter place, away from the noise and the fast pace of the present.

That’s the magic of these songs. They make you drift away from this world. Imagine a late-night drive, your playlist shuffling, and suddenly it plays that banger “Every Breath You Take.” For a moment, you wish the ride would never end. Sadly, it’s short-lived, and you soon reach your destination.

As much as music brings ease, it also awakens emotions and memories sometimes opening doors to past regrets. Suddenly, you feel like you’re reliving those moments again, stuck in a continuous loop with no clear end. We turn to music to lighten the burdens of the presentor even the past ,but sometimes we choose songs that force us to reminisce about moments already lived, whether they bring comfort or pain.

The human psyche might be the strangest thing to exist to want pain at times just to heal from it. To store emotions and memories inside a simple two-minute song feels effortless to the song, but never to us. A song you once enjoyed with someone close can become unbearable to hear, simply because it reminds you of them. At that point, you let go of the song, right?

So why can’t we let go of the past in the same way knowing it pierces like a needle? Why do we hold onto it like a rope embedded with broken glass, ripping skin from our hands as if our entire life depends on it?

There is no harm in cherishing good moments shared with someone dear someone who may no longer be with you ,but not at the cost of yourself. Many interpret letting go of the past as betraying someone they once cared deeply for. Some may call it loyalty; more logically, it is self-intoxication like sipping a wine that harms more than it pleasures.

Wanting to feel pain is part of the psyche. One thinks, what harm could it really cause? That’s where it begins. But the deeper one goes, the more they realize what it truly is and what abyss they’ve fallen into.

So why dwell on the past at all? It’s a logical question, often asked by the inexperienced. To them, the present seems fine no need to look back. Straight thinking, one might say. Ask those who do dwell, and they’ll tell you it’s their escape from this “loud” present.

Life has become fast-paced, overwhelming, and noisy. Those who merely exist go with the flow. But those who want to live become aware of the loudness surrounding them. Once, they lived peacefully, without much care until they were thrown into the present. They found escape in drifting back, to the point where even memories that once hurt began to feel like a venomous black rose.

This rose, romanticized by poets, justified a form of self-intoxication for many guiding innocents toward an abyss. Darkness was romanticized, painted as something noble and untouchable, never to be questioned. I simply wonder why one would choose a rope infested with glass shards over letting go, when it is tied to nowhere anyway.

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