“Nostalgia” is defined as a bittersweet emotional state that combines a fond, warm longing for the past with a slight sadness because that time or place is gone.
Nostalgia is one of those things that hits you when you least expect it. No one walks into a grocery store expecting their eyes to land on the special cookies their mom would always buy. No one turns on the radio expecting to hear their dad’s favorite song from when they were younger. It just sort of happens. Then, what I like to call “the spiral” starts. What was just a box of cookies or a song on the radio affects your next minute, hour, or entire day.
- You zone out. Your body is in 2026, but your brain is in 2010.
- Your senses follow. You can hear your grandma’s voice. You can see your dad’s young face.
- The good memories start to pile in. You get that child-like feeling back in your chest. You are free of responsibilities, and don’t have a clue what the real world is like yet.
- You realize you’re not in 2010, you’re in 2026. You can never go back to that time again.
I would argue that nostalgia is an experience, not just an emotion. There is a reason that nostalgia doesn’t fall under the cookie cutter list of emotions that humans experience.
For many years nostalgia was considered a disease. A fatal disease, to be exact.
I came across this idea of “Nostalgia Disease” in Dr. Jac Lewis’ article in Psyche. Lewis writes that the disease “was thought to have afflicted mostly mobile classes of people like students, sailors, and soldiers, and appeared in a wide variety of debilitating and melancholic symptoms, from insomnia and loss of breath to difficulty eating and a brooding misanthropy.” Although socially called a disease, there was no medicine or doctor that could help cure these feelings.
Where this concept really grasps my attention, is when I think about how this was a fatal disease. Lewis writes, nostalgia is “a longing for return that turns to mania as the mind becomes gripped by homesickness while the body wastes away, leading to death by nostalgia.” Although nostalgia is no longer considered a disease, I think the facts behind the previous understandings show just how deep nostalgia can feel.
For many college students, nostalgia is one of the biggest challenges to face. Moving to a new city with new faces, food, classes, and surroundings can lead to constant remembering of what once was. I know for me personally, I can get stuck in loops of thinking about memories from the past and wishing I could go back.
But isn’t that the whole point?
Why else do people wake up every day with a plan to make their lives greater than they currently are? People make time with friends and family, make time to laugh, and do things that make them happy no matter what season they are in. People do this to make memories to look back at. It’s like people want to feel nostalgia. They want to catch the disease. From my perspective, feeling nostalgia should come with feelings of happiness and gratitude.
How lucky are we to have memories worth missing?
Moving forward, I have a different perspective on nostalgia. What once had a negative connotation is now something that I strive to have, and I invite you to feel the same. Instead of thinking how that time will never come back, think about how grateful you are that it happened, and how it led you to where you are today. Wake up every day with the attitude of making memories that are worth missing. Make nostalgia the disease you want to catch.