Nostalgia is a mind's trick!

All about nostalgia and how it plays a very important role in shaping our present selves.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the attic. Feel free to roam around and experience the surroundings. Today, we would share our thoughts about nostalgia. Yes, nostalgia, a very valid feeling we all feel often in our lives. Before sharing my view on this, let us recall the definition of this magical word.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, Nostalgia is ‘a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition’.

For sure, it is wistful and we always yearn for a wistful moment that happened in our lives. Nostalgic are those memories which are from our past but somehow makes us yearn to go back and live that moment again. It’s not possible and that's the truth. Maybe it would be possible in a few decades (or who knows, a few centuries?), that we would be able to time travel and relive our nostalgic moments. But tell me, will you feel the same emotion which you were feeling when you were just reminiscing a past moment if you would travel back in time and relive that again? If you ask me, no, and there’s a very valid reason for it.

Did you see the title? Well, it’s simple, ‘Nostalgia is a mind’s trick!’. Tell me, where have you heard that? It’s not an original title by me but from someone else.

You guessed it, this is a lyric from Taylor Swift’s latest album’s song, ‘I Hate It Here’. So, why do I resonate with this lyric? Well, I always feel that our memories age like fine wine when we sit with them for a long amount of time.

For instance, imagine you are living your childhood life where your life has a daily schedule, like, waking up early (or your mom waking you up early), eating cereal, going to school, having the time of your life with your friends, coming back, going to play outside till dusk, having dinner with the family, and going to sleep early. This is a generic lifestyle of a child and that child living this life would not feel anything special or great about it, but let’s imagine again, that that child has grown up to become a hardworking adult living alone, being always busy with their office work and, when they think about their childhood, this daily lifestyle would be a nostalgic memory.

The reason to feel nostalgic about something so simple is just because, we forget our past, because we are so busy with our present, in this hectic era, and when we start reminiscing about the past, it calms us and makes us yearn the relaxing days, the happy hours and a positive approach towards life. But, if I were to ask you, would you like to go back and live your childhood again? Some might say yes and I would too but tell me, if it was like a ‘never coming back to the present’ situation then would you happily stay in the past… forever?

No, because then, we would not value the childhood memories the same way we did in our present hectic lives. That’s what makes nostalgia a mind’s trick because some things look better from faraway and the moment you try to procure them, they become ordinary for you.

Nonetheless, nostalgia is a crucial part of human feelings because without experiencing our nostalgic moments, we would never be able to feel grounded in our busy lives. Nostalgia is a short vacation to a place near and dear to you but the difference is, you get to experience the scenic destination without a physical sense of belonging but somehow you are present in the past and in the present at the same time and that, is what makes nostalgia, a mind’s trick.

Farewell.