I am more nostalgic than ever lately. Maybe it’s because good memories are a balm in seasons of hard change. Or maybe it’s because the world news is painful to watch, and the past feels safer. Whatever the reason, I love the sights, and sounds, and scents of anything old and familiar right now.
A few weeks ago we went to Disney World to wrap up what has been a stressful summer. It was crowded, hot, and stormy. The Delta variant was beginning to pick up speed and concern loomed in the air. Many moments of our four days there were logistically difficult.
And yet this morning when I pull out the souvenir coffee mug we brought home with symbols of the parks on it, I am nostalgic for the trip. My mind immediately conjures up images of the highlights of our most recent trip there and all the other happy memories I’ve made there in the past rather than the challenges and absurdities of Disney in late July.
Nostalgia is a strange and powerful thing. The word itself comes from the Greek words ‘nostos’, for ‘homecoming’, and ‘algos’, for pain.
In the 1600’s doctors and psychologists thought of nostalgia as a brain disease or mental illness plaguing people who were stuck in childhood. But in recent decades, psychologists have been studying nostalgia and noticing how people use it in positive ways to self-regulate. And they are also noticing how when we are lonely or stressed or anxious, we often become more nostalgic because things from the past comfort and reassure us.
For example, since the onset of the pandemic, there has been an uptick of interest in old music and old shows. Or on a much more personal level, since we moved I have a special affinity for anything that reminds me of where we lived before.
“Nostalgia is a way for you to generate meaning in life… it allows you to use it as a resource where you reach back in time to where you felt meaningful, when you felt deeply connected to others, perhaps, or when you felt like you had real direction in your life.” (Clay Rutledge, Psychologist)
In a mysterious way, nostalgia is a place where sadness and joy co-exist. I see my girls being especially nostalgic now as they struggle with their newness in this town and their feelings of loneliness. All of us want to cling to anything that reminds us of the friendships or the community and sense of belonging we felt in the past. Nostalgia can be healthy in moderation but toxic if we camp out there or fail to realize its blind spots and limitations.
So how can we use our own feelings of nostalgia for good? How can we properly and healthily enjoy our 80’s music, our old photo albums, or our souvenir mugs without thinking the present or the future pales in comparison to the “good ‘ole days” of the past?
In The Weight of Glory C.S. Lewis wrote about the longing we all have for beauty and wholeness and deep joy.
“These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”
Basically Lewis reminds us that our longings (or our nostalgia?) can point us toward something even better than our memories. They can point us toward the only One who can completely fulfill and comfort and satisfy us.
So the next time I pick up my Disney coffee mug, I hope to practice feeling gratitude as much as nostalgia. And not just gratitude for a park that claims to be “the happiest place on earth,” but gratitude for the reminder that we have a God who is the source of all the creativity and imagination and joy of which Disney World—even on its best day—is merely an echo.
Our memories can be a gift and a comfort when the present is hard. But our hope is always in knowing that the best is yet to come.
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