The Golden Days Are Always Now

The movie Midnight in Paris tells the story of Gil Pender, a writer living in California. Gil writes movie scripts, but dreams of writing a novel. While he is on vacation with his wife in France, it is all he can think about, especially because during the 1920s Paris was a hotspot for fiction writers, including the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. These two and other artists—like Picasso and Dalí—contributed to what became known as The Jazz Age, or The Roaring Twenties.

One night, Gil is wandering around the streets and miraculously travels back in time to the very age he had been romanticizing. He ends up meeting Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and is as shocked as Luke Skywalker finding out who his father is. But his panic then transforms into joy; he realizes he is living in the times he always thought were the best of times.

But then he meets a woman named Adriana. She surprises Gil by saying that she doesn't think they are in a golden age. No, in her mind, the real golden age was the Belle Époque, an earlier period in French history. That was the era when people were wiser, the artists more talented, the city more glorious.

One night, Adriana and Gil are wandering around and manage to travel back in time to the very age she had been romanticizing. She meets some of her heroes of the Belle Époque, and is as elated as someone feeling the effects of red wine for the first time.

But then they get deeper into their conversation. Adriana's heroes do not think they are in a golden age. No, in their minds, the real golden age was the Renaissance. That was the era when people were wiser, the artists more talented, the city more glorious.

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You see the trend. I can recall some examples from my own life. In high school, people would romanticize the football and basketball teams of earlier eras, when everyone's athletic role models and older brothers played. Our teams were often just as skilled, and the competition just as intense, but somehow, it was more special back in those days.

Let's call it the Midnight in Paris Hoax: the tendency of the mind to over-romanticize past eras. Combine it with what I call the ride-off-into-the-sunset fallacy—the delusion that one day you’ll arrive at a state of permanent happiness—and you have a reliable recipe for misery. You can’t help but think of the vintage Schopenhauer quote:

“...though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely in expectation of which they lived.”

How can we guard against this common, dangerous way of thinking? It sounds silly, but one of the easiest ways to break free of this trap is to recognize that personal hygiene in every earlier era was worse. For most of human history, there was no such thing as deodorant or floss.

The further back you go in time, the dirtier. It is gross to even think about. There is no shortage of comforts—ones that have objectively raised the general quality of life—that we take for granted. Clean water? Never heard of it. Tore a tendon in your leg? You’ll never walk again. Sinus infection? You’re finished. “Contrary to popular belief,” writes David Deutsch, “primitive societies were unimaginably unpleasant.” To wish you lived in earlier eras reflects a stunning lack of perspective.

Fair enough, you might say—avoiding the Midnight in Paris Hoax on a broad, civilizational scale seems doable. But what about the problem of idealizing the past within your own lifetime? That’s a tougher challenge, I know. But simply recognizing how universal this tendency is can alleviate its pain. As with anything, understanding reduces suffering.

And as always, you can take some inspiration from the shoulders of giants. “Remember that what you now have,” wrote Epicurus, “was once among the things you only hoped for.” Or how about these lines from Emerson:

“…man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

You know who could’ve used this wisdom from Emerson? The character Andy Bernard from The Office. In one of the last scenes of the show, he says, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” I wish I could tell Andy that there is. You just need awareness that the Midnight in Paris mentality is a hoax. Like Gil does at the end of the movie, you just need to realize that the golden days are always now.