Avoiding the downside of good memories

Silverberg is one of the leading science fiction writers of the last 60 years — a polished, highly literate writer; one of the best in the United States. If he worked in another genre, he would enjoy the kind of following literary crime writers like Elmore Leonard attract.

Just after the turn of the century, one of the science fiction specialty houses issued a multivolume edition of Silverberg’s massive short-fiction output. In a column for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, he described how it felt to read some of his stories — sometimes for the first time in decades — as he prepared them for reprinting. He could read them, he said, as if they had been written by someone else. When he read one of his best novellas, Born with the Dead, he was surprised to see just how good it was. He found himself wishing, as writers will, that he could do something that good again.

Then he realized he didn’t have to do it again. He had already done it.

A couple of years after I read Silverberg’s column, my wife and I ate our last Valentine’s Day dinner in a restaurant. We didn’t know it would be the last time we would eat out on Valentine’s Day, but I knew it would be one of the last. The streets were full of young couples when we walked back to our apartment, and I started wishing we could be one of those couples, with decades stretching ahead of us.

Then I remembered Silverberg’s column. We had already done that. We had, in our turn, been one of those young couples. In our life together, in fact, we had done most of the things they hoped they would be able to do.

There have been other times since then when Silverberg’s useful little thought has eased me past the temptation to shed tears over vanished glories. It’s natural to look back at the big moments in your life and wish you could relive them. But the good times shouldn’t weigh you down.

Enjoy the memories. Be glad they happened. Concentrate on what comes next.