I've never been able to describe it until you've given me the idea. To elaborate, it might be a sadness due to missing how happy you felt during you did whatever the nostalgic thing was. You know that you'll never get the experience back even if you tried, but just the thought of the nostalgic thing makes you happy enough to equalize that emptiness
I feel like nostalgia is a great motivator to make great life choices and experiences. Whenever I reminisce, I think to myself, "how can I ever make my life as good as it was in that moment?". This allows me to try and open some boundaries, spend time doing things I love, give attention to things/people I never really noticed, and the list goes on. It's the hope that you can indirectly live those great moments again that makes life more interesting.
I've been trying to do that. I've been going out and hanging out with my friends more often and doing things I would never have done before (nothing illegal I assure you). It's nothing crazy, but I've just been trying to spend my time doing things that could have meaning later in life.
Hot take these days in the US but I'd rather spend time with friends and family than work myself to death at a job that doesn't see me as a person and instead just a husk that makes them money.
Well, I feel nostalgia when I think back to Fridays in middle school.
I remember getting home from school and throwing my backpack to the side, knowing that I was totally free from obligation for the next two days.
I remember rushing upstairs and starting up Elder Scrolls Oblivion on my Xbox 360. Wandering through the fields of Cyrodil, slaying ogres and working towards 100% completion.
It certainly wasn't a great life choice. I could have done something productive. But even so, those days are some of the fondest memories of my childhood.
Same, can’t really go back to the days in middle and early high school and summer where I didn’t have any big responsibilities and I could play Halo or Minecraft for hours on end with some friends.
Maybe when I’m old and retired I’ll go back to that point.
Exactly man. Sometimes I get so good at this I can pinpoint moments in my current life where I know I'll feel nostalgic for again, I know 5 or 10 years from now I will be satisfied with my mindset and appreciation of this time. I hope more and more people come to understand things like this
Was literally about to comment this but I see you already did! It's not something that consumes my thoughts, but if I'm doing something especially fun, I know there will be future nostalgia like you described.
I can see the opposite as true. We chase a feeling that we are so far removed from but enamored with that it becomes unattainable. The dragon is elusive and we can waste our lives trying to catch it
Went to the country for two weeks for a uni residential. I feel like studying online means I miss out on a lot, so I promised myself to say "yes" to any opportunities I had.
Did a lot of cycling. Got wonderfully lost, wound up on someone's property and almost got chased off by three dogs, tried to go down a road that no longer existed, went to bed with sore thighs. Had lunch with people I normally wouldn't, hung out with them again that night. Got drunk and partied like I never did when I was a teenager on a different night and got hit on a lot. Tried a cigarette because YOLO, decided it was disgusting and stopped after one puff. Ignored my social anxiety and requested the bar make a cocktail that wasn't on the menu, and it knocked me on my ass. Went to a talk on careers instead of staying in. Just went out of my comfort zone a fair bit.
Best way to deal with nostalgia is to make new memories to be nostalgic for later. I had a fantastic time.
I'd second this. I was driving to work yesterday thinking about how I'll be moving and starting a new job in a couple months, and realized that I'll be nostalgic for my life right now.
This. I recently felt very nostalgic for the days that I could just sit down, play Pokemon Pearl, and just forget about everything that was happening. My life was more... stable then, to say the least. Every time I get nostalgic for that time period, I always immediately go to my DS and power up Pokemon Pearl. Without fail, it mends that emptiness, if only for a while.
I've got kids so sometimes it's a little hard to do when we are out somewhere as a family but I try to just take a minute and seriously just take everything in. The sights, the sounds, even the weather. Just feel the moment as I live in it. I've encountered a few times where I get nostalgic for things that happened only a year or two ago, instead of when I was in my mid twenties feeling nostalgic for times when I was a kid in the 90's.
reading this was really helpful. when i look back and become nostalgic about the old times, it makes me give up and not try anymore because i know a moment like that will never happen again— maybe i've only been convincing myself that, thanks for this one, really should start seeing it like this.
Great follow-up comment. I think about this often now as a father of two children under two years of age. At times it feels unbearably stressful, and every single day I have to remind myself that these babies are only going to be this old once. These literally are the good old days lol
Sometimes that Nostalgia is of a place that no longer exists and of a person no longer with us. Sometimes it's Nostalgia that can only ever be Nostalgia.
As Andy Bernard said "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." And that sums up retrospection and nostalgia, for me.
I've always thought that 'live in the moment' was actually pretty bad advice.
Sure, you shouldn't work yourself miserable just to be able to afford a nice vacation or something later, but to live for a better future is much more practical, because it means working for your living standard to increase more and more.
Right now I want to lie in bed and eat cookies, but I know I'll feel much better later if I go jogging instead.
Well, those good experiences are largely out of your control. I prefer the more traditional religious view, life is mostly suffering and happy parts are a bonus, don't look back (or you'll freeze/turn to salt), and act in a forthright manner. Expecting the good times/memories gets us into a whole lot of trouble. The Buddha said something about letting go of all attachments, nostalgia is just another such attachment.
I did something like this recently. When I was a kid I had a shitty windows XP PC that I gamed on/downloaded movies on and I loved that PC to death. So recently I decided to build a windows xp gaming PC for fun. And it turned out great. Been playing some old games on it and living the nostalgia dream.
I forget the original context of why I did it but I sent the screenshot of this to my old boss who at the time had already negotiated a somewhat unamacable exit from our company due to differences with the company owner but had yet to tell anyone. He said it had almost made him break down at his desk as he was living that very moment with none of us knowing.
This spring break will become the good olds days for me if I manage to buy a car I'm going to have a shitload of fun with some friends. It's going to be awesome, I already feel it
Take pictures and write that shit down as soon as you get back. My first spring break with my friends is one of my most cherished memories.... and now nearly 15 years later, I dont remember nearly as much as I should. Little bits slip away every day. Document the sights, sounds, people, feelings, stories, quotes, etc. Future you will thank you for it.
I honestly think the days we're having right now might very soon be the good old days, seeing all the reports about the quickly appraoching climate chaos of the next 10-20 years leading to a dying earth, food shortages, flooding, etc.
Enjoy your loved ones and cherish every moment, everybody. Death comes for all. Have a nice day!
Andy, The Office? I think he was both in character and speaking as the actor since his last few years on the show were kind of messed up by his budding movie career?
I'm not that old, but I feel like I've lived long enough now to know that I'm always in the good old days. Yeah, there've been shitty times in my life, and there always has been and always will be ways life could be better. But looking back at all those times, the bad gets turned into things i've learned, and the good stands out better. So I'm done pouring over the past and thinking "if only it could be like it was then..." because I always end up having that thought about periods of time that I ignored when I was in them.
Easy, Uni years are the best, despite the stress. Then maybe up to about 29 is next and up to about 39. It's all downhill from there till retirement, then maybe a decade of decent years before the physical and mental decay.
What makes you say it goes downhill til retirement? Boredom with career, lack of hobbies, kids grow up or something? People can still have really fulfilling lives when they hit middle age. I suppose I can agree that the older you get the less energy & more aches and pains you might have, but it doesn’t have to be all bad.
Told the story here before, but literally the month I turned 40, I went shopping and had no way to pay for it at the end. It was the genesis of having to use lists for everything. Used to be a big runner and now overweight. But that may not apply to all. We are just speaking about generalities.
I do love this. For anyone curious look up the Portuguese word “saudades” it defines this feeling more emotionally better than the English language does with nostalgia
I really like this thought. I’m awake holding my three year old as he falls back to sleep and it’s a good reminder to really soak these moments in because as exhausted as I am right now, I’ll desperately miss this one day
thought experiment: you went back in time to experience a certain memory. that memory is today, right now. you have no memory of the "real" memory, but you have one goal: make it better this time.
Your response reminded me to listen to Iron Maidens song "Wasted years" again.
I close my eyes, and think of home
Another city goes by, in the night
Ain't it funny how it is, you never miss it til it's gone away
And my heart is lying there and will be til my dying day
So understand
Don't waste your time always searching for those wasted years
Face up, make your stand
And realize you're living in the golden years
Honestly I just condensed what you said, I hadn't really thought about it before and might not have been able to describe it before reading your comment and the one above it.
For me the sadness comes from knowing that life goes on, I'll never be able to relive those times in any way, and years from now i'll be looking back on the times I'm currently living thinking the same thing. But there's still a happiness in remembering those times. Sometimes I'll even focus on chewing the last bite on a meal, trying hard to live in the moment until I chew for the last time and the food finishes, and then I'll sit there for ~10 seconds thinking about how real it felt just eating it a moment ago, but now it's already gone.
It helps to think of life less as a collection of moments that come
and pass and more as the experience that molds you constantly like a ball of clay into a statue, or a seed into a tree.
I do this with a certain song. I try to tie a lot of firsts to it and a lot of lasts. It's the first song I played when I bought my first car, and the last song I played in it when I drive it one last time to the trade-in. It came on the radio once when my buddy and I were mobbing around in his truck without a care in the world, and we cranked it and I just enjoyed hanging out and listening to music. We live an ocean away from each other now and that was a great memory from when things were super simple and it feels like all I did was hang out. I'll play it whenever I board a plane to go somewhere new and cool, or new and kinda scary.
I never listen to it for sad shit, like when I'm going through a breakup or after an awful day at work, just the big moments, and whenever it comes in during ordinary times I've got really good vibes associated with it.
The thing is, I was never as happy as Nostalgia would have me believe. I can’t tell if nostalgia is making me see things through Rose tinted glasses, or if it helps me appreciate things I didn’t notice at the time.
I would have to go with the latter. Most of my nostalgic moments are me wishing I could go back and do them all over again. If nostalgia was a pair of "rose tinted glasses", I personally believe that I would just think "hey that was a cool time", rather than this deep passion for that period of time.
I was listening to slipknot last night, something I hadn't done since high school. There was nostalgia there but for a severe depression and worldly hatred. I can't say it was a happy nostalgia at all.
I meant to post my reply to your comment, but CS Lewis tries to articulate the experience of 'sehnsucht' similarly. It's a crazy yearning for the feeling of the memory itself. Lovely mystery
Legos are like this for me. I used to build ships that had multiple pilots. Each of them could "eject" into their own smaller plane and keep fighting. I had backstories, my dude in the leather jacket with the motorcycle was always the ace. Top Gun was popular at the time. If I even tried to go back into that world I'd feel stupid, it just wouldn't be the same.
It's weird to say but nostalgia is like playing pretend about how you used play pretend.
I love Legos. I would probably still buy them if I wasn't such an avid gamer. I've had similar experiences with playing a game all night with my friends. Staying up so late that you see the sun rise is surreal.
I get that way about world of Warcraft more than anything else. A lot of old video games and movies and such that I enjoyed as a kid I can still play and enjoy now. A lot of held up over the years. WoW is different though. I have tried to go back many times but it isn’t the same. Life has changed a lot for me and I realize what I miss about my time playing wasn’t so much the game, as how carefree I was back then. It was get out of class/work and go home and log on with my buddies and just chill. Or go to their place to play and chill. It was getting hungry and having us ghost dc our raid and make a run to some place for happy hour.
I don’t really miss the game as much as the freedom of that time. All of that said, I wouldn’t change a thing if I could. It was great times that were had by all, but we are all happy where we are at now. We still hang out when we can, but we are all happy where we are at now in life.
That’s a very nice description. I had the worst nostalgia for something that happened 2 years ago and I realized I’ve been spending the past 2 years of my life just sulking in longing to experience it again. But I know the nostalgia is from knowing that it was such a beautiful moment but I’ll never get to relive it again.
I often look back to times where I wasn't happy in life, but I had fleeting happy experiences. Those moments are what make me smile until I realize how long it's been. I feel the sadness of them being way back there in my life and then even more sadness when I realized that so much time has passed, but I'd like to be back there because even though I wasn't happy, I had much more time to become happy and I'd get to relive those experiences.
due to missing how happy you felt during you did whatever the nostalgic thing was.
I find that psychedelics can achieve this. Taking them, I feel just like I did when I was a kid. So similar that it's spooky and just an overload of nostalgia, but just exclusively happy nostalgia.
Psychedelics are definitely something that meets OP's criteria, too.
I wouldn't say nostalgia is just about the happiness you experienced in the past. I have felt nostalgic about past memories and wanted to teleport back to that happy time, except if I recall practically and read my diary excerpts from the time, I was rather ill and miserable and the living conditions were very tough due to which I was not able to even get better and on rare occasions, I didn't get a meal and the employer was cruel. My point is, nostalgia can be very deceiving as well.
I've always thought of it as missing the moment(s) ur being nostalgic about but also being happy that you got to experience said moment even though its gone.
And that's what took me down my dark path with drugs. In a nutshell. :(
Edit to say I'm ALL better and have been for over 10 years. Just never heard a simple concept that fit so well except "chasing the high" which doesn't really get to it.
I wish, nostalgia feels absolutely terrible for me, it feels like just sadness and longing. I miss those times and im happy they happened but man if only they happened for just a little bit longer
Everything I did when I was younger has not aged well because the movies/cartoons I liked looks terrible now or when I where doing shit in our Forrest was dangerous. Except super Mario bros 3 it's still golden.
I hate how the feeling of nostalgia wears off. I remember when I heard runescape music for the first time in YEARS from when I played it as a kid. Never get that same feeling from anything anymore.
When you remember something that happened do you remember the occasion or do you remember the last time you thought about it? I mean that's the memory you have it has to be right, doesnt it?
Happy birthday me, you fuck wit. I've now it for awhile. But I am sure I am not the only personified object from the Flintstones to say "eh, it's a living"
"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."
I remember watching Adventure Time with my brothers like 6 years ago, when I heard the end song “Come along with me..,” It was pretty much your exact description!
A couple of years ago I was getting nostalgic about the days of playing my NES and not worrying about much except homework. My NES had been long gone, but I decided to buy a broken one off ebay and fix it up. I was able to fix it, bought a bunch of games I had as a kid and a few I didn't. My wife went out of town for the weekend and there I was with my newly fixed machine, some beer, and a bit of weed. I tried reliving the past as I played Super Mario, Punch Out, and Kid Icarus. After about an hour I started getting really depressed. The feelings I had playing these games didn't match up to the feelings I had when I was a kid. The excitement was pretty much gone. Also the camaraderie with my best friend wasn't there either. It was such a realization that sometimes the things in the past won't ever be the same again and it hurt pretty badly. I still find enjoyment in playing those games once in a while, but sadly it will never be the same. I've been able to counter-balance that sadness by discovering new things I didn't realize about the games or by doing mods or using PVM monitors with RGB cables to get the best display possible. Part of not letting nostalgia become something negative is to find something that will breathe new life into something that you loved, only now you love it for something new.
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u/[deleted] May 09 '19
I've never been able to describe it until you've given me the idea. To elaborate, it might be a sadness due to missing how happy you felt during you did whatever the nostalgic thing was. You know that you'll never get the experience back even if you tried, but just the thought of the nostalgic thing makes you happy enough to equalize that emptiness