Nostalgia… oh, nostalgia.
After becoming an adult, which happened about four years ago when I began getting paid for my time and presence, I never again had the amount of time I could dedicate to just daydream. I could not lose myself in time listening to the songs I used to hear in high school, or reread the poems I used to write, remembering who I was and why I did the things I did.
It’s great to find patterns, sometimes negative ones, sometimes ones that make us see what our personality is like. I find it therapeutical, healing and productive to reflect on the past. It’s a kind of nostalgia that won’t hinder our progress – which happens when we’re depressed or unhappy with life – it will, if we approach it from a psychoanalysis point of view, show us the positive and the negative tendencies we have always had throughout our life.
The delight of old memories
But recalling old times is like tasting an old dessert your grandma used to cook. Feeling the scent of an old fragrance that we used in a specific winter. Flip through that photo album from your ten year-old birthday party. It can be absolutely unproductive and just serve the purpose of being delightful. There’s a longing attached to it, that can only happen when you’re completely available. Like you used to be when you were nineteen and unemployed.
I don’t mind sounding like an old lady. Remembering the past gives me life. Nostalgia, especially these days, with the pressure to always be productive, doesn’t seem like lost time to me. It’s a much needed delight, a feeling of comfort and pleasure, something that’s quite natural to me, in this moment of my life.