Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a warm, bittersweet longing for a time, place or people from your past: a childhood kitchen, a summer with old friends, a song from high school. It looks back with affection and, now and then, an ache that it's over.
- On the wheel: Calm, then nostalgic
- More exact words: Sentimental, fond
- Nearby: Wistful, homesick, longing
- Often points to: People and moments that made you who you are
A smell, a song, and you're twelve again
One breath of a certain soap and you're back in a house you haven't stood in for years. There's warmth, a smile, and a small pang that it's gone. Both at once.
Fond is the closer word when the warmth is aimed at people or places from long ago. Sentimental is the word when the tenderness clings to an object that carries a story.
"I found my grandmother's recipe card in a drawer, in her handwriting. I made the soup that night and called my cousin to tell her."
More smile than ache
Nostalgia leans happy, with a sad edge. People's descriptions of nostalgic memories held more expressions of happy feeling than sad, across seven studies of what nostalgia is about, what sets it off and what it does.1 Many told of a hard moment that came out well in the end.1
This wheel files nostalgic under calm for that reason. Its close neighbors on the sad side are wistful and homesick.
Low moods and loneliness set it off
Bad moods and loneliness came first in the same studies: nostalgia tended to show up right after them.1 The memories it pulled up starred the person remembering, alongside friends and family, or at big moments like weddings.1
Read that way, a wave of nostalgia is your mind reaching back to a time you felt close to people.
It's a signal worth listening to.
What the memory does for you
Calling up a nostalgic memory strengthened people's sense of social connection in the experiments. It also raised how they felt about themselves and lifted their mood.1
Sad songs do something similar. Asked which feeling sad music brought up most, 772 listeners in an online survey named nostalgia.2
A word coined in 1688
The Swiss physician Johannes Hofer coined the word in 1688, from the Greek for "return" and "pain", and for him it meant homesickness.3 The meaning has since grown broader and warmer.3
Putting it to use on a lonely day
- Go looking for it. Pull up photos from a time you felt close to people, and notice who was in them.
- Turn the memory into contact. If a memory brings someone to mind, send them a message tonight.
- Catch the tip into regret. Once looking back turns into "if only", you've crossed from nostalgia into regret.
- Write it down in detail. Smells, sounds, who said what. Keep the page.
What memory have you come back to lately? Write it in as much detail as you can, then write who you'd like to share it with.
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask about nostalgia
What is an example of nostalgia?
Hearing a song you danced to at 16 and feeling, for a moment, like that kid again. Or smelling cut grass and thinking of summers at your aunt's house.
Can nostalgia be bad for you?
On average it lifts mood and connection.1 It turns against you when it becomes a place to hide from the present, or when you measure today against a past that looks better in memory than it was.
Related
- Melancholy: a quieter, sadder mood that often travels with nostalgia.
- Regret: looking back with "if only".
- Grateful: glad for what you had and have.