Oxford Mentality

High Street, Oxford by J. M. W. Turner

There is a theme in some stories of establishing some beautiful way of enjoying living, with meaningful friendships and freedom from care and responsibilities, in the beginning. And then life, family, and obligations develop and the main character becomes mature and accepts that this greying is rather the way life is supposed to be. Yet, the story rather focuses on the hero’s reminiscing for that original childlike wonder towards life through a nostalgic historical narration. The proustian madeleine triggers and the narrator goes back in time to relive the formative, meaningful, deliberate, beautiful moments. Brideshead Revisited is an excellent example of nostalgic romanticism for a better past: a golden age, a paradise lost, a youth that can never be regained.

The Oxford mentality is an invocation of youth, freedom, and fulfillment. The Oxford mentality takes on rose colored glasses with a romance towards life as a poet in love with living. Everything is either beautiful or an easily conquered challenge meant to test the hero’s virtues. The attitude is carpe diem. There is no consideration that one day the Oxford moment will be in the past, and as a result, there is a liveliness of youth. This youth goes with possibilities, where anything is before one, and there are very few limits that can not be melted with a little charm. There is a communal aspect, where one finds others as compatriots in one’s quest to subjugate the world, with the idealistic sincerity and naivety that is needed to be the center of the plot. Any effort, regardless of success or failure, is with the conscious determination and ambition of building the character that will prove the hero worthy of his endeavors. They will write books about us, the hero might say to his compatriots, if he spares a thought to consider there is anything but the present moment.

It is also very easy to idealize the past. When memories are invoked, the romanticized beauty is the focus rather than the details, the fights, the struggles: the challenges are made light or easily forgotten. The narrator looks back at the past with poetic lenses, the author of the memories. The present can be heavy in comparison.

But then, as Mary Poppins says, “it’s time to go home” and what returns to reality is an adult, no longer under the spell of childish dreams.

It is difficult to sustain Oxford moments for very long, even with authentic Oxford friends, because life is messy, reality evolves, and real life does not hold up to idealized innocence. This is demonstrated nicely when one returns to their family home during the holidays: the memories and the rituals are dutifully performed to honor and relive the childlike sense of wonder, but after three days of being home there are expectations, nagging, conflicts, and frustrations that arise.

Invoking Oxford can be indulgent if it is sacred and distinct from real life, or it can be consciously lived in order to create heroicism in the present.

Immature

Often the child adult who wishes to extend Oxford moments indefinitely does so in order to remember instead of to live. There is some complacency with trying to grasp who they were in the glory days to the detriment of growing up. There is as well chasing the high, while the body becomes more conditioned to the effects of the happiness hormones. Peter Pan’s promise is in opposition to the Genesis serpent’s petition: you never need to accept responsibility, never need to be accountable or obliged, never need to grow old and boring, never need to care. The immature individual lives in denial of responsibilities, rather in a nihilistic fantasy. Après moi, le déluge.

Compartmentalized

Some are accepting of distinguishing real life and Oxford moments because they can taste their freedom and joy through their memories. Real life is bland and a quick succession of busy nothings, but at least there are those moments of beauty that one experienced and can return to in their dreams. Oxford moments are savored as sacred. Reality is a necessary evil that is bearable because one has experienced bliss. This distinction separates the two states into extremes where neither reflect reality, as both are too filtered to be believed. The compartmentalized individual lives different lives, all in bad faith, masking his multiplicity to play the role in the dramaturgy. There is a denial of freedom to do otherwise, and so he becomes a victim to obligations and circumstances.

Palliative

This attitude can be palliative. Those who hold onto Oxford moments accept that they are not living because they have experienced the best feeling they can imagine and therefore do not make an effort to live beyond Oxford. The feeling exists in their memory without present care, without incentive to continue to care. They accept that the rest of life can be satisfying their duties and fulfilling their functions until one day they die. From the other’s perspective, this can look stoic, while philosophically, this is a slow death attitude. The slow diers accept without battle, life is atrophic, and time marches on. Unless they are the hero of a great novel where their telos is to narrate their golden days to a captive audience, they accept that their epitaph was written long ago. They have no desire for it to be revised to reflect the undignified monotony of what happened in the decades after their great adventures.

Has-Been

Some people refuse to leave Oxford, staying in the same town where they grew up or keeping the same friendships they have had since childhood. This would work well if nothing ever changes, but people, jobs, events, connections come and go, and so these hometown holders are left complaining wistfully to anyone who will listen: things aren’t the way they used to be… which of course means things are definitively, non-negotiably worse. Some people are a bit more conscious about a desire to hold onto their glory days and marry their university sweetheart and keep childhood friends retelling again and again the old stories about their adventures from their teens and twenties. They revisit Oxford through these exchanges, but have trouble keeping a distance from their youth, trying to reject a life of adulthood, responsibility, and age.

Presence

The Oxford moment can also be appreciated for what it is, as a painting in the museum of the self, but a museum full of many paintings, including ones not yet experienced. An attitude of finding the beauty in enjoying memories, planning for future ones, yet ultimately living in the present is a healthy way of being. Nostalgia is good when it is invoked in appreciation of the lived moments, knowing the future is pregnant with possibilities and the present is here and now to be enjoyed. When one is not attached to nostalgia, not living in order to relive, the present is one of freedom. Nostalgia can be a source of simulation for that freedom. One can take a moment to appreciate this painting, but one need not be stuck on revisiting the same paintings when there are entire wings yet to be explored. The important difference is presence of mind within the present and appreciation that the past is prologue.

To Invoke Oxford

During my early adolescence, I amusingly discovered an intense connection between scent and memory. Particular smells invoke a powerful nostalgia. It is my Proustian madeleine. The entryway to my aunt’s house meant a decadent visit to the Pacific Northwest with loving family. Vitamin shampoo meant hot water and daydreaming in the shower. Jet fuel now smells like the promise of soon adventure and the immediate ominous threat of motion sickness, but it was once the smell of my father’s Air Force uniform when he returned home. Conscious of this power, I have for years now appreciated it as a gift and invoked it intentionally. I would pick a new soap for significant experiences so that I could imprint that chapter into an aroma. Later in life, I decanted some rosemary essential oil to establish a writing mood while composing my thesis. But my favorite employment of this gift is when I studied a semester at Oxford: I went to the Whittard tea store and chose a flavored black variety that I would associate with my time there. Now on my birthday, with dear friends, or over weekends when I read a novel and do not much else, I make this tea and enjoy the nostalgia. In these moments I am ageless, I neglect my responsibilities and stresses, I am present, and life is light and harmonious. My mind is back at Oxford, with my friends, on to new adventures, or curious in the present to welcome the next inspiration for a text. Oxford is one of many corridors to appreciate in my ever expanding museum.

Attitude

It is possible to invoke not just an Oxford moment, but also Oxford mentality in the present. The hero described at the beginning of this text is not remembering, he is living. So why do we so often reserve heroism for the past? The difference lies in the attitude. We think of our heroic moments as something we did in the past, while the present struggle is overwhelmed with practicalities, emotions, and a serious lack of perspective. The past feels noble because we already know how the story ends: we edit out the doubt, the confusion, the steps of failure. But we heroes continue to live after the “happily ever after” with our humanity and life’s reality, often confronted with the ugly and mundane in various portions with the good, a messy truth much harder to romanticize. We make value judgments and react to our challenges. We sometimes allow the moment in comparison to the romanticized past to overwhelm, and sometimes forget the freedom contained in the future.

We could bring that same wonder, charm, and idealism into the present. We could confront our challenges as character building and our foes and foils. We could carry our battles not as fading memories, but as scars and badges into the next chapter. To practice Oxford mentality is to greet life with poetry and presence, not to filter reality, but to elevate it. In doing so, we become not the narrators of a golden past but philosophers of the present. We take an interest in what we want to say about the world and what we want the world to say about us.