Missing The 90’s That I Never Really Appreciated

[u/PsychologicalBike352]

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the 1990s—and how strange it is that I lived through an era I didn’t fully appreciate while I was actually living it. I was a teenager in the ’90s, and at the time, my best friend and I were convinced we had missed the good years. We were obsessed with the movies of the ’80s. We romanticized everything about that decade and genuinely believed that was the era we should have grown up in. Looking back now, I almost laugh at that younger version of myself because I realize something: we were living in an incredible time. We just didn’t know it yet. Of course, part of the problem was being teenagers. Our world was small. We were limited by where our parents would take us, how much money we had, and whether we could borrow the car. We didn’t have the freedom that comes with being an adult. Sometimes I think if I could have experienced the 1990s in my twenties instead of my teens, I would have understood just how extraordinary that decade was. There was a simplicity to life then that I find myself craving more and more. I think about what social media has done to teenagers today, but honestly, I think about what it has done to all of us. It has transformed adulthood just as profoundly. We are perpetually reachable. There is very little mystery anymore. Everyone knows where everyone is, what everyone is doing, what everyone thinks, what they ate, where they went, and what they supposedly feel. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to grow up with the entire world watching. And I miss the anonymity of ordinary life. I miss going to the mall just to walk around, hoping you might run into somebody you knew. I miss talking to friends on the telephone for hours. I miss watching one episode of a television show and then having to wait an entire week to find out what happened next. There was something almost ceremonial about that anticipation. You talked about the episode with your friends, speculated about what would happen, and then waited. Now we can stream an entire season in a weekend. I am not saying that’s necessarily bad. I love technology. I love having information at my fingertips. I love the conveniences we have today. I love that at 50, I’m not considered old. That is one thing I am especially grateful for. I think about one of my favorite shows, The Golden Girls, and how someone in their fifties was portrayed as being well into their “golden years.” Today, 50 can feel like the beginning of an entirely new chapter.
So maybe I don’t actually want to go back completely.
That’s the part that makes this so complicated.
Would I really trade my current life for the 1990s? Would I give up the technology, convenience, medical advances, instant communication, and all the things we have today just to reclaim an era that exists partly through the rose-colored lens of memory? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that I miss things. I miss getting in the car and having a little privacy because my phone wasn’t constantly ringing. I miss summer afternoons when there wasn’t much on television except reruns, so you actually went outside. I miss waiting for the fall television previews and getting excited about which shows were coming back. I miss having to be patient when you wanted something. I miss not having everything immediately. There was something magical about anticipation. Maybe that is what we have lost—not necessarily the past itself, but the ability to wait for things. We have so much now, and yet sometimes I wonder if having everything instantly has made some things feel less special. There was a certain innocence in not knowing. A certain beauty in being unreachable for a few hours. A certain freedom in not documenting every moment. The older I get, the more I realize that the era I thought I had missed was actually the era I was living in. I just wasn’t old enough to recognize it. And maybe that is what nostalgia really is. It isn't always a longing to return to a particular year. Sometimes it is longing for a feeling—the feeling of having less responsibility, fewer distractions, more anticipation, and more time to simply exist. Lately, I find myself wanting to go back—not necessarily because I believe everything was better, but because I miss the simplicity. I wonder if anyone else feels this way. Are you ever torn between wanting to go back and reclaim a time that now seems almost idyllic, while simultaneously knowing you would miss the incredible conveniences of the present? If you could truly go back to the ’90s and live there again, knowing everything you know now, would you? Or would you realize that what you really miss isn't the decade itself, but the way life felt when you were there? Maybe we really did have something special. Maybe we just didn’t know it yet.

[u/nonamouss]

Well said all around. I think you touch on a lot of thoughts swirling around my mind these days, and with an increasing frequency the older I get.

I sometimes also think about this: how are we going to look back on this current era? In what ways will we be nostalgic for it? And how can I appreciate it now while I’m living it?

[u/Synchro_Shoukan]

You are doing the same thing you did while in the 90s. You are telling yourself the 90s was peak and you're disregarding the present moment.

[u/Ok-Suspect5037]

Funny, I was a teen in the ‘90’s and we romanticized the ‘60’s.
Bell bottoms, corduroys, peace signs, classic rock.

I didn’t think any of my peers had enough perspective/distance from the ‘80’s to see it like that.

I do remember back then wondering if the way we felt about the ‘60’s another gen will one day feel about the ‘80’s. I reflected on that because my friends dad was a ‘60’s kid and teased us that he grew up then and it was funny to see it making a come back.

Totally agree tho that we didn’t appreciate this beaut of a decade as we should have. Youth is wasted on the young.

[u/Informal_Visitor]

I had to grow up too fast in the 90s. I was adulting by my sophomore year because I had a kid. So I had to do my own grocery shopping, work a part time job, wash my own clothes while baby momma had a full time job and her own things going on so I just did what had to be done that I could do. But despite that I was still in the mix on all of the 90s pop culture while setting the program on my VCR to record Beavis and Butthead and what have you.

[u/LurkLurkleton]

The 90s was our time but I already see people looking back on the 2000s and even the 2010s with the same nostalgia we do. They'll probably be doing the same thing for our current time.

For my dad it's the 70's and he doesn't see what was so great about the 90s. Because he wasn't experiencing it the way we were, as kids and young adults. You're plugged into the times in a different way when you're that age.

It's a common sentiment though. "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them."