Nostalgia And Grief

Is there a certain level of irony that an 18-year-old is talking about nostalgia? Absolutely. I’m not old enough to feel the true impact of nostalgia. I’m just past my childhood. But it already is such a powerful feeling that I can’t help but write about it.

In essence, what is it? It’s memories of a younger you, of experiences that you won’t be able to have again, of people who have changed with you and people who have moved on without you. Memories laced with happiness and loss.

It’s always the simple things that hit the hardest when it comes to nostalgia. The things that we thought were mundane and normal. The simplicity was almost magical at times.

I’ve been feeling really nostalgic recently. My school days are coming to an end, and there’s this deep and profound sense of grief that I’m not able to shake off.

This made me realize that nostalgia and grief are actually two sides of the same coin. The word grief evokes images of death, but nothing that drastic needs to occur for you to feel grief.

Grief is that feeling of mourning or of loss. You can feel grief over paths not taken, missed opportunities and futures that could never happen. You can feel grief when you regret decisions you took, friends you didn’t spend enough time with and things you should have done more.

Nostalgia is built on a happier form of grief. Anything can trigger it.

Music is really powerful at triggering nostalgia, it’s almost vivid and visceral at times. When you listen to an old song that you loved when you were a kid, it’s like being dragged by your neck and being shot into the past. It’s intoxicating.

But it’s always the simple things we did that we missed the most, and that’s very revealing of what we seem to value as people.

It’s not the vacations, the extravagant restaurants or the huge parties that we’ll remember and cherish forever. It’s the day I called a friend over, and we played Xbox till 3 in the morning. It’s the music and movies I loved. It’s the people you meet every day. It’s the places that house our treasured memories.

What does that say about us? Do we really know what we want?

Don’t get me wrong, I love vacations. But I don’t look back on them with nearly as much fondness as I do the hushed and quick conversations I have with my friends in between two classes.

My point is this—Nostalgia exists not because the past was better, but because all the bad sharp edges have smoothened out due to weathering from the ever-flowing river of time. This makes it look better than the messy and contradictory present.

Grief on the other hand exists as a guiding stone. Grief is a sign. It’s a sign that we are constantly trying to do better in our own lives. The deaths of others spur us to do better in the lives of ours. The mistakes we made in our past tell us what not to do in the future. The futures that could never happen points us to a future we can build.

The mind is unpredictable. It’s emotional, fluctuating, and unstable, yet at the core somehow it is logical, constant, and stable. These two things cannot coexist. Yet they do. It’s these fundamental paradoxes of nature that makes life exciting. If everything made sense, there would be no joy in discovery.