Is Nostalgia Always Bad?

I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
But all he kept talking about was
Glory days

~ Bruce Springsteen

If I told you that people tend to get stuck in time … or trapped in a decade … you wouldn’t be the least surprised. You already know someone like this. Hell, I might even be talking about you.

In our minds we vividly remember the clothing and the hairstyles. The music. We remember the way we felt as younger versions of ourselves, so full of questions and still untarnished by life. We remember our first kiss, our first something more. We remember falling in love for the first time.

And we also tend to forget all of the pimples, the awkward situations, and that one time in the cafeteria when … you know, I really don’t want to talk about that one.

High school was “the time” for many, but college probably brings back even more nostalgia for you. Because that’s when you also tried on being a real adult for the first time.

Every Saturday, do you still root for your team like you did back in the day? Tailgate parties? Wear the old school jersey or sweatshirt? Do you still think of yourself in terms of your sorority, fraternity, or other school group?

Does your current hairstyle and dress still resemble something from those years? (Hell, do you even still own those same clothes?).

If so, then you my friend, suffer from nostalgia.

Ok, here’s a word you might not know. Anemoia. It means to experience nostalgia for a time that you have NEVER known. In other words, you actually experience genuine nostalgia when you see old photographs or hear sounds that hark back to a time other than the one in which you were born, grew up in, or lived. People born in the 90s who somehow still feel nostalgic for the 70s or 80s, for instance.

Nostalgia is so powerful that we don’t even have to have our own to be consumed by it.

When we are sentimental for people, for experiences, places, things … or even when we look back for a version of ourselves that we once were … it’s the reasoning that’s important.

The “why”.

I once met a man who belonged to a group called SPAB. The Society for the Preservation of Adolescent Behavior. They had meetings (read: semi-drunken parties). They had SPAB-Names. They wore buttons and had other identifying marks.

In short, they weren’t anywhere close to acting their ages.

Which begs the question … were they reliving “the best years of their lives” just as Bruce sang in Glory Days? Just as those who are trapped in nostalgia for a time when they felt they were at their finest? Before … you know, before everything else happened?

THE DARK SIDE

Let’s look at the dark side of nostalgia first. And there are actually several variations of it.

Personal Nostalgia is when we miss what we had in the past. Anticipatory nostalgia is when we miss things even before they’re finished. And random nostalgia is exactly what it sounds like … negative, unconscious, and sentimental feelings. Everyday moments of “pop up” nostalgia that are more likely than not to have a fatalistic effect on us. When we can’t stop unfavorably comparing our current moments to those in the past.

Starting back in the 17th century, nostalgia was considered to have a demonic origin. And it was later classified by some clinical psychologists as a type of melancholia or psychosis. Today it can present itself in many negative ways.

You can suffer depression from unhealthy nostalgia. Locked in cycles where you go over the past again and again. Feeling consumed by worry, guilt, or even self-loathing because you perceive yourself to be “not as good as you once were”. Or that life stopped moving forward for you at a certain time, and nothing since then has ever felt as good or joyful.

Rumination, or deep and considered thoughts about your present and past, can leave you unable to stop repetitively focusing on things that distress you, and also prevent you from trying to figure out possible causes and consequences.

Both of which can lead to anxiety, because we can only see our past as a milestone that we can never reach again.

But nostalgia doesn’t have to be so obstructive and consuming.

THE LIGHT

I would argue that those SPABers (SPAB-ites?) are actually on to something.

Yes, I have personally attended the debauchery as a SPAB-Pledge. And what I saw wasn’t in any way shape or form an act of reliving the past. It was instead a celebration of the present … and also the future.

By reconnecting with our roots, and remembering what it felt like before time jaded us to possibility, mystery, and imagination, we can live the current circumstances of our life with fresh eyes of anticipation. We can use nostalgia to provide continuity. To use our hard won experiences in combination with our past enthusiasm.

The trick … or the secret sauce, if you will … is how we use nostalgia. It’s what we focus on. Do we center our attention on how positive and wonderful it was then, or do we wallow with the knowledge that it’s over now?

For me, it’s a transition. I used to hark back to that time before a career in something had to be decided. When the only real desire I had, aside from my teenage hormones, revolved around imagination and creativity. Before life took over and there was no longer time for youthful desires.

Because I now had responsibilities!

And so I looked back at the late 70s and early 80s as those years “when I had the opportunity to be my best, and I took it”. And I felt that those days could never return, so it was best just to pack them away.

But now I realize just how wrong I was.

I still have imagination in me. I just don’t use it all that much anymore. I can still believe in possibilities, even though life has repeatedly tried to show me how unlikely they may occur. It’s not a zero probability, so there is no need to only focus on the likely. And there is plenty of room left to enjoy the fantasy of life, while also living somewhat between the guard rails that society expects of us.

Preserving certain aspects of adolescent behavior is a desirable thing. Curiosity. Hope. Trust. These are actually the real memories that we reminisce about. Not the cool Michael Jackson clothing or that song by Madonna. Not that time when we all snuck out of the house and hung out together down by the river. It was the feelings that we had before we were taught to dull them.

So … SPAB? Yea, sign me up.