I felt weirdly disoriented saying goodbye to my mom and best friend after their visit last weekend, suddenly crying as their car drove away. Their departure was a reminder of my life pre-BU, which was jarring because I hadn’t realized how much it felt like I had moved on in such a short time. The stress of starting freshman year had definitely left little room in my brain to reminisce about the place I had come from.Â
Some of the tears I shed that day stemmed from grief of missing quieter days at home back in Jersey, but the other half of my tears were products of gratitude, feeling so lucky to have a family and friends that I love this much. Why was I experiencing such a strange mix of grief and happiness? That’s nostalgia doing its job, serving up a sweet-and-sour plate of emotion. Of course, the psychology major in me feels the need to analyze the feeling down to the bone.
Johannes Hofer coined the term nostalgia in 1688, unifying the Greek words “nostos,” meaning homecoming, and “algos,” meaning pain. Hofer saw nostalgia as a disease. Many of us probably resonate with Hofer’s speculation, feeling plagued with grief when we look back on once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like high school, or core memories from childhood. These bittersweet memories leave us feeling off-put and sometimes sad, even though they aren’t actually psychologically bad.
Although initially hypothesized to be a disease, nostalgia is now more commonly viewed as a healthy emotional response and can even be seen as a positive, motivational force that helps boost self-esteem, happiness, and authenticity. It can help us find purpose in life when senses like smell and hearing activate our limbic system, the structure in charge of storing and retrieving our memories. When this happens, we are rewarded with a release of pleasure-inducing dopamine, reinforcing our retrieved memory. Dopamine creates a lens of warmth and sentimental value to see memories through, which can bring us back in touch with the past in a way that is emotionally satiating.
The change of season we are experiencing on campus heralds the approaching holidays. We will all most likely be feeling the weight of nostalgia in these upcoming months as we head home for weekends and breaks from college life. For freshmen specifically, after undergoing the huge transformation of becoming a semi-independent college student, touching base with the past is going to be tricky.
During my own upcoming trip home for fall break, I am bracing myself for the reins of nostalgia to grab and pull at my heart when I least expect it. But, I suspect that when I return to BU, I will feel wonderfully grounded by the same memories that caused all the tears.
When do you feel most nostalgic?
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