We live in a culture that really values youth and youthful faces, bodies, and interests. Every year, people spend thousands of dollars on surgeries, products, physical trainers, and special foods and diets so that they can look younger and cheat old age and even death. Why the obsession with beauty and youth? I believe that as we age, we look back to our youth with longing and wistfulness; we think of things we did and didn’t do. We think of our first loves and our unrequited loves. We wish we could go back in time with the benefit of what we know now, but of course, we can’t. If ever there were such a thing as a time machine, however, it would be music! You know how you feel when you hear music that you danced to in high school, or the music that was popular when you fell in love for the very first time.
Social scientists have studied the phenomenon of people in their “senior year” who are put into an environment of, say, 40-50 years earlier. They walk straighter, see and hear better, and generally feel better! So what does this say? Well, you can’t redecorate your house in the style of 50 years ago, but you can certainly listen to lots of music from that era. I’ll include an excerpt of some of my favorite music from high school! Enjoy!