While browsing through someone‘s website, I came across this thought provoking take on nostalgia –
“I’ve always viewed nostalgia as a heresy, but it becomes increasingly harder to fight it off as one grows older. Perhaps it is part of the mechanism we use to cope with regret: when enough patina accumulates, mistakes can be viewed as formative experiences, and switch from being sources of regret to being key moments that contributed to the development of one’s present self. Viewed in that light, nostalgia is a form of self-deception, which doesn’t make it any easier to accept.”
I pondered over it for a while: in the abstract, through the light of my own experiences, my own ideas on it. I conclude (at least for now) that for me, nostalgia is prevalent, but not important/controlling/mood-altering. As I write this, a nagging doubt that nostalgia is indeed mood altering, though not controlling, is creeping in. Why do I say this? As my mood….
I lost a few “instense-nostalgia-triggers” with my wallet a few days back. The first thought was of sadness at loosing these nostalgia-triggers. And now, I can think of the sadness these triggers themselves used to bring about each time by making me take nostalgic trips down memory lane. Now, as I think of the lost triggers, I am struck that I now have memories of my memories. Time to move on.
H. W. Longfellow thought that Nostalgia is a feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain. Poetic eh?