Memories

 Listen to the song in another tab while reading, its a good song and is kind of related.
"Hey remember that time that we hiked up to that waterfall in the woods and dove off the top?"
"Yeah that was sweet! It was like 100 feet tall!"

I'm sure that you've heard a conversation like this before. A stark over exaggeration of the actual events that transpired is so common in society that we don't even realize it anymore. This romanticizing of the past is prevalent in society as well as in The Great Gatsby. Gatsby has an idea that "'...you can! [repeat the past]'" (110) He has blown up his memory of Daisy so much that she can never live up to his standards. He has had so much time to reflect on his time with Daisy that he kept remembering it better than it was, like the cliff in the example wasn't really 100 feet tall. Every time he thinks of her he remembers her better than before. Thus the sense of "nostalgia" he feels for her is very skewed because his memories are not pure and he has boosted what she was actually like. We as humans are all guilty of this. We all remember things better, or worse, than they were in order to make our lives more exciting. The truth is that only a few of us truly experience fun, amazing adventures that are worth remembering, and everyone else pretends that they have had fun things like that in their lives too. Gatsby has sailed "three times around the continent" (100) that's an adventure worth remembering. So the message today is that next time you can go adventuring or do something random and fun, do it. I know its cliché but life's too short man. Way too short.