What is that warm feeling full of colour and safety and comfort that floods in with shadows of memories?
Why does it feel so attractive to dwell in the place where those thoughts of old thoughts of old dreams live?
Question: Is nostalgia always a good thing? Maybe dwelling in it constructs an escapist world with walls that don’t
really exist, behind which we project all that we feel we lack in the
present moment. My feeling is increasingly that this saps the goodness from the here and now, because it becomes an illusive ideal; a refuge or 'safe haven' to flee to; in short a refusal to engage with the fearful aspects of the real world. And it cultivates the baseline belief that the 'real' will never be as good as the imagined/past/non-existent.
I wonder if it also stops the past from ever being properly buried. We think, if only I could find that lost thing; if I could recover it; if I could be there again, it would all make sense, it would all be good. Why aren’t things as they were before? And the thing still hurts. We feel hard-done
by, forlorn, abandoned.
“What is nostalgia, but ideals which masquerade as the past?”
The word 'Nostalgia' comes from a combination of two ancient Greek words: 'nostos' (or "homecoming"
and 'algos' (which means "pain"
So in origin, it’s the idea of that sense of ‘home’ being embittered, frustrated, or lost. The idea of a native country now inaccessible – and the longing to return. I guess its kind of a platonic idealism; the longing for a foreign country full of conditions set by our imaginations that has never really existed. Like the desire for the boyfriend/girlfriend you don’t
have (or the house/car/job)… and then I would feel like this and this would happen and it would all be ok… in the same way it’s not based on reality but on a projection, a fantasy of the lack felt in the current moment.
The past can provide some food for this sense of loss/lack/emptiness; the future others; alternative realities (eg films, fiction, fantasy) others...
But is it always a bad thing?
Memories washing over you like autumn days with strains of nearly forgotten music, the smell of roasting chestnuts, crunching leaves and playing in the park; thick snow and fireworks, old films, first stories and coming in from the cold… – if you can see it and remain in the now is it ok? Can you appreciate without dwelling in? Can you miss without feeling incomplete?
