Does this ever happen to you? You’re shopping in a store with music overhead and a song stops you in your tracks. In that second, you’re back in time. You’re young again—even if you’re only 25 now. The feelings are vivid and you start to smile. You’re circled around a campfire with other teenagers, looking across at the handsomest boy you’ve ever seen. Even if he broke your heart then, you’re effortlessly remembering all the feelings you had that allowed your heart to be broken. In that grocery-store moment, you’d give anything to relive those heart-bursting feelings. Tears sting, and yet the smile remains.
Welcome to nostalgia, as one writer put it, “the human love affair with days gone by.” A Swiss physician named Hofer coined the term “nostalgia” in the late 17th century to describe a disease unique to Swiss mercenaries fighting wars far from home. Webster says nostalgia is “pleasure and sadness caused by remembering something from the past and wishing you could experience it again.”
It’s sure a mix of feelings, isn’t it? An intense sweetness, then instant heartache, a wrenching anguish in the stomach. “Bittersweet” doesn’t quite do it justice.
But do we really want to be around a campfire again with our legs and back aching, or do we want a chance to experience the way those feelings felt and what they meant to us? Do we really want the pimples and awkwardness when we danced to “Sleepwalk,” or the capacity to feel exultation and love beyond loss that swept us away at that time?
Since there’s pain involved, a lot of us might try to avoid nostalgia. But unless we get trapped in the grief, the feelings and meanings of times past can actually serve us.
Dr. Clay Routledge, a leading expert on nostalgia, says that nostalgia is often a positive thing. He says we feel nostalgic most often when we’re lonely or in a bad mood, and nostalgia can lift our spirits. It can also increase our belief that our lives have meaning, reinforce our connection to others we care about, reduce stress and help us feel more energized.
I’m not sure about being energized. But I do agree I tend to feel nostalgic more often when I’m lonely or sad.
I think what we do with the nostalgic feelings is what matters. We can be overwhelmed by the pain of years that have passed too quickly. Or we can revel in the sure knowledge that since we once felt so deeply, we can feel that way again. We can be utterly depressed because we can’t make that same meaning now. Or we can “interrogate our ghosts in search of meaning,” as one author puts it. We can cry at the sweet innocence that was and never more will be. Or we can remember the successes in our lives, the obstacles we’ve overcome and the strength of our love today.
Only we can make nostalgia work for us. We can’t have those specific times again, but we can be open to feeling deeply now and finding the meaning of intense feelings now. As the song says, nostalgically, “Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end.” They have, but we can feel all those feelings, happy and sad, and bravely feel renewed again.