Beyond the power of 'now': exploring the power of nostalgia.
Permission to feel: nostalgia
We are told that, in order to be content and happy in life, we need to live ‘in the now’.
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Yet, I wonder if living in the past for a fleeting moment can help us touch on that very contentment and happiness which is so promised in the present. (Sorry Eckhart)
Just like dear old Anton Ego here, we can have moments where a taste, smell, object or sound triggers a memory. These aide-memoires are known in psychology as ‘retrieval cues’.
Yes my little popacatapetals, the feeling of the week this week is nostalgia!
Whilst researching this week’s missive, I was bemused to find out that nostalgia used to be considered a mental disorder in the 17th century.
When you think of nostalgia, don’t you see it with a positive spin, a warm ‘It’s a wonderful life, everything ends up alright in the end’ kind of glow?
The word ‘nostalgia’ is formed from the Greek 'nostos' ("homecoming"), and 'algos' ("pain”) and was coined by Dr. Johannes Hofer, a Swiss physician in 1688.
Back then, it was a term used to describe a psychopathological condition for people who felt uprooted, fragmented in their social connection, isolated, and frustrated.
Thinking about living is this state reminded me of my poem ‘All at sea’.1
If we have a homesick like ache, a bittersweet longing, for times gone by that we cannot move through, then such a feeling can be problematic, leading to difficult behaviours such as hoarding.
Our emotional attachment to the memory plays a significant part in what memories we recall and how we feel about them.
I sent a note out earlier this week asking which songs made you feel nostalgic. Thank you Clare and Kari for getting involved! What struck me about their answers, was not the songs that they chose per se, but the emotions that were evoked from the memories of listening to those songs. Kari wrote about a sense of belonging and fun, dancing around the bedroom to ‘Hey Mickey’. Clare shared about the delicious limitless longing of teenage unrequited love that listening to Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ could evoke.
Yet with these type of memories, although they are fuelled by nostalgia, there isn’t a desire to recapture or hold on to that feeling from the past. It is packaged away in its rightful place, ready to be picked up, played with, yes, but then put down again. I think nostalgia becomes problematic when the longing leaks into the present because of unprocessed grief.
It all depends on whether our nostalgic moments offer a time to reminisce or ruminate.
I don’t think it’s ‘luck of the draw’ that some people can feel the benefits of nostalgia whilst others experience what Hoffer referred to. In the brain, nostalgia related activity happens mainly in the ‘mid brain’, the part that controls learning, memory, reward processing, addiction and the modulation of stress. We know that people who experience emotional trauma have a smaller hippocampus (part of the mid-brain) and it would make sense that those who get ‘stuck’ in nostalgia do so because of the effect that trauma has had on them being able to recall, process and ‘put away’ these memories.
Yet research suggests that when we can recall those moments to reminisce they can bring a feeling of belonging and empathy, reduce stress and increase a sense of meaning.
And you know that warm glow I mentioned? Well, a study found that feelings of nostalgia were more common on cold days. Researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China found that people in a cool room (20 degrees Celsius, or below) were more likely to express nostalgia than people in warmer rooms. It has been suggested that conjuring nostalgic memories may be a way of maintaining physiological comfort. Doesn’t that change the way in which we may perceive hoarding, that all of those retrieval cues are offering comfort at a much more fundamental level than opportunities to reminisce?
Isn’t it amazing what can influence our reasons for being nostalgic?
Clare and Kari have given their shout about which songs make them feel nostalgic. What about you? Drop a message in the chat - I’d love to make us a playlist of all our nostalgic songs! Mine? This song takes me right back to our first dance at our wedding!
That’s it for now,
‘Til next time!
Jacky x
The papers you poke at
Are not (in fact) a disorganised pile,
But a telescope where I can look for miles;
Back to the things I may have missed,
When I mattered more, was less dismissed.
And that broken tea pot
is not (in fact) ‘random tat’,
but it takes me back to my first flat
with my only love when we laughed and laughed…
my teapot memory life raft.
And the fridge magnets and knickknacks there
are not (in fact) random clutter,
but memories that unfurl and flutter,
if I were to hold them in my hand;
like lost treasure dug from within the sand.
The piles of books in every corner
are not (in fact) a random selection,
but a faithful rudder aiding my direction.
Their words, coordinates to steer me on…
if I just had time to open one.
All this that you say must go
is not (in fact) what’s at stake
but, like a boat creates a wake,
the consequence of my truth within;
that I’m afraid that I can’t swim.