Nostalgia: What Is it We Are Looking For?

For many people, the past—or at least some stretch of it—represents a “golden age,” a time better than what we know today. Earlier decades, those proponents claim, provided simpler and more contained possibilities for living. Prior to the clamor of the internet and the proliferation of television channels, people depended more on one another, and on nature, for their satisfaction. Family was a focus; so was religion. Face-to-face interaction was key. “Social media,” at least of the electronic sort, was unknown. Once upon a time, children roamed neighborhoods freely; informal play was more important than adult-supervised versions. Consumers shopped locally. Community pride, and patriotism, were public expectations.

In that regard, a 2015 study of changing American values found that 53 percent of adult respondents believed the 1950s to be preferable to current times.

Other people, including many who grew up after World War II, would dispute those claims. The stress of the nuclear family meant that women often found themselves confined to domestic roles: raising children, supporting their husbands, and doing housekeeping. Girls had fewer educational opportunities than boys did; female play was restricted. Racial minorities faced discrimination in most of society’s institutions. Being gay was something one hid. Even the supports of community and religion could be stifling in their calls for in-group conformity and out-group suspicion. What President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” enforced a distinctive vision of America, both here and abroad.

Most fair-minded people would acknowledge that past decades have their advantages and disadvantages. Science and technology have advanced so that people in industrialized countries live longer, and with more comfort, than before. That same technological impulse has heightened the dangers of nuclear attack and environmental degradation. The human population—and its possessions—has expanded dramatically; the natural world is receding. Computers and electronic media have created undreamed-of possibilities for cultural production and expression. Among those possibilities are addictions to shopping, gambling, and pornography as well as radical politics, online theft, and ransoming. The pros and cons of globalization, essentially the movement of people, goods, and information across national borders, are too numerous to list.

Having acknowledged such complexities, I want to discuss here the more selective fascination with the past that most of us exhibit from time to time. That specialized interest is nostalgia.

Be clear that nostalgia is not a yearning to revisit the past in its totality, that is, to confront fully the various issues described above. Nor is it a desire to have the values and norms of an earlier time rule us now. In that sense, nostalgia differs from traditionalism. So also does nostalgia differ from the reverence for the past central to many of our most important faith traditions. According to those creeds, there were long-ago times when great men and women lived among us and when God made evident his plans for humankind. Past, present, and future joined coherently. Pointedly, however, those religions emphasize that we should obey the moral pronouncements of those times and model our lives today on the examples of our great predecessors. Religion is not a revisiting of the past, it is a claim that the past lives in us now. Our little notions of time and timeliness are irrelevancies, what matters most is eternity.

To be nostalgic is to want the past in its sweetest, or most idealized, form. In that light, the term nostalgia, with Greek roots, connotes a longing for home. It became popular at the end of the seventeenth century as a description of the discontent of Swiss mercenaries, who found themselves isolated from the sights, sounds, and smells of their Alpine world. Those soldiers missed the intimacy of family relations and the congenial give-and-take of village life. Their melancholy was wistful or bittersweet—on the one hand, a savoring of good times, on the other a realization that those moments were now gone and perhaps irretrievable.

Few of us are isolated in the fashion of those soldiers, far from home and facing death each day. Nevertheless, we too understand the meanings of separation, if not by space then by time. What adult does not have a family member or friend they loved and lost? Everyone surely has treasured experiences: a first meeting with someone who became important in their life, an unexpected triumph after much adversity, a special holiday gathering. It gives us pleasure to remember these occasions, to recall who was there and what they did. Most importantly perhaps, we savor how these events made us feel.

In that spirit, we get out old photo albums or watch family videos. We ponder artifacts: a child’s drawing, a varsity letter, a pair of dancing shoes, a tool once used in a kitchen or shop by a loved one. These items are touchstones, apertures to a distant segment of our lives.

Sometimes, we do not need these supports. Our recollections derive from sensations, intensely momentary and yet more than that. A smell reminds us of grandmother’s parlor; we feel some fabric that recalls an old chair the family had; a special food or beverage brings back a get-together we hadn’t thought about in years. It gives us pleasure to make these connections, and to know that they remain accessible, enabled by the deepest stirrings of our minds.

To be sure, we can take this journey on our own. However, it is even more rewarding to do so with others. Two adult siblings cast up recollections of what happened at some family picnic forty years ago. High school alums recount their shared escapades. Old teammates recount the ups and downs of long ago seasons.

The truth or falsity of these tales—for who could know?—is not the point. What matters now is the way we construct those distant realities. When we reminisce collectively, we reaffirm that what happened then was significant to our development as persons. We signify that those now distant persons were important to one another. As present-day tellers and listeners, we maintain that the group at hand continues to be of value. We tell stories less to recreate the past than to build relationships with one another. If we meet again in ten years, we will recall different aspects of those events and offer different reflections on them. History, at least oral history of this sort, emerges from the ever-changing vantage point of the present.

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The reader will insist, and rightly, that reminiscence of this sort is not the same as nostalgia. Reminiscence may center on both positive and negative experiences. It may concern the slightest or most ephemeral of happenings, little things that stun us when they come to mind. Commonly, our stories have heroes, villains, and fools as well as a cast of supporting characters.

By contrast, nostalgia centers on sweet memories. Those remembrances become poignant with the awareness that these times and places are now gone. Grandma died decades ago. They demolished the old home. In part, we yearn for those distant connections, but we also long for our own vanished youth. We would like to be that naïve, and hopeful, and filled with possibilities once more.

Is nostalgia is a good or bad thing? Psychologists disagree. In its positive functions, nostalgia keeps us in touch with our past; indeed, it honors that past as important to who we now are. It celebrates key events and relationships. It affirms that whatever current difficulties we may be facing, there have been people who cared about us. Nostalgia can be a balm in times of change, indecision, and stress.

Bittersweet reflection has its place. Too much of this can hamper people’s adjustment to a changing society. This is particularly the case if they impute “golden age” status to times and relationships that were not without blemishes. Grandma could be sharp-tongued. Idealizing the past is a problem if that means despoiling the present and the future we must build together.

Let us happily go down memory trails. Attend the “Pioneer Days” festival in your nearby town. Visit Disney’s “Main Street.” Enjoy the “Old Timey” character of a kitschy shop or artificial lemonade mix. Open the box of high school memorabilia and the old photo albums. But know that the world moves on and that those past days had challenges that rival the ones we face today.