An ode to the human duality that is nostalgia
In high school I was in IB Visual Arts for my junior and senior year. It is a two-year college level art course in which you make a final themed exhibition. My theme was nostalgia. I did extensive research for months attempting to learn anything and everything I could about the human phenomenon that is nostalgia. Turns out it’s a really complex and minimally studied emotion. I continue to be fascinated by it: the strange combination of happiness and sorrow, the odd triggers, the comforting pain, and the indescribable nature. Nostalgia miraculously is two things at once, proving that we, as humans, are meant to be multi-faceted, complex and confusing. When I was making my exhibition, I was immersed in the world of nostalgia, but I was seventeen, in high school, living in the town I had lived my whole life, devoid of any substantial change or interruptions in my life; had I really felt the true staggering storm of nostalgia?
Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past. It can be a positive communal experience or an isolating deep sorrow. It can resonate positively or negatively, by flushing you with gratitude and happiness for your beloved past or overwhelming you with pain and distaste with the present. Physical sensations, such as smells or sights, conversations, looking at visual memories of the past, negative emotions such as sadness, loneliness or boredom can all trigger nostalgia. It can be an escape from our scornful present, a projection of our romanticization of departed moments, a crutch for discovering our identity and purpose, and a tool to calm feelings of uncertainty.
When I moved out of my childhood home into college, nostalgia hit me like a piercing gust of wind. It filled me with intense dread. My gratitude for my lovely, whole, whimsical childhood resonated as a pit in my stomach. I feared that I had peaked. I feared that all I had left was this feeling. I was afraid of change, uncertainty, loneliness, pain. My nostalgia grabbed onto that fear and gratitude and had a field day.
Nostalgia can be triggered by death too. When my grandma passed away just weeks after packing up and boxing away my nostalgic art exhibition, I was putting my collaging skills to use (I did a lot of photo collages for the exhibition) to make her photo memory board. Looking at her high school graduation photo in her pink feathered dress with pink lip gloss and perfectly done hair, I felt nostalgic for 1962 when my grandma was eighteen, like me, when she was young, and hopeful. This is a term called anemoia, a longing for a past you had never experienced. Nostalgia is a sensation that transports beyond the constraints of time. Nostalgia is contagious, you can feel it emanating off of someone through the slight ache in their face, the subtle smile or the twinge of both sadness and sparkle in their eyes.
Have you ever felt nostalgic for a moment that hasn’t happened yet? That’s called pre-nostalgia or anticipatory nostalgia. Essentially, it is the desparte feeling of wanting to live in a certain moment forever knowing that you will be nostalgic for it once it is over. This can also be experiencing a moment vicariously through your future self, as in envisioning a hypothetical future moment that you are feeling nostalgic for right now. It flips what we understand to be nostalgia, yet maintains the same sensations. As I said, nostalgia is complex and it completely messes with our understanding of time.
I love nostalgia. It is so poetic because it is intensely human. It’s intensely human because it is littered with nuances. Nostalgia makes me feel warm, but sometimes the warmth gets too hot it burns; but that’s what I love about it. We all need a little dose of nostalgia in our lives to remind us that we are emotionally charged beings who crave comfort, stability and love.