Ask me how I’m feeling. Ask me how I’m feeling after Christmas and New Year and everything it entails. Ask me whether I’m happy or sad or hopeful or depressed and the answer will always be the same. I feel nostalgic. I’m thinking about the past and the used-to-be and I’m wondering: how on earth can I get back there?
All in all, the nostalgia hit me a few times over the holiday. It hit me when I was watching footage of old stars at Glastonbury with a group of teenagers and they kept saying ‘who?’ It hit me when my godson introduced me to his girlfriend and I thought of him as a wee boy. It hit me when I met up with university chums and discovered one of our number had died, aged 54, of the virus. And it hit me, over and over again, whenever I watched an old movie or listened to an old tune. Nostalgia. Nostalgia.
So the question is whether there’s something wrong with me and I think I found the answer in one of the festive episodes of QI (I pine for the old ones with Stephen Fry don’t you? they were so much better). According to the programme, nostalgia was first described by the 17th physician Johannes Hofer and for many years it was seen as a medical problem that needed to be treated; during the Thirty Years War for example, soldiers were actually discharged from the army as sufferers of nostalgia.
There have even been attempts over the years to find a cure - one French doctor suggested the only way to stop nostalgia was with “pain and terror”. But the latest research suggests that, far from trying to fix the problem, we should be celebrating it as natural. Researchers at Southampton University found that feeling nostalgic helps to counteract boredom, loneliness or anxiety. There’s also some evidence that it leaves us feeling literally warmer - perhaps that’s the evolutionary explanation for why we sometimes pine for the past.
But there are other lessons to be learned from the research and they’re important. First, not all types of nostalgia are the same. It’s fine - it’s good - to indulge in the warm feeling induced by an old memory or an old place or an old tune, but it’s not fine to compare them with now. Do that and you’ll end up regretting past decisions or lack of decisions. In other words, do nostalgia by all means but don’t do comparisons.
The second lesson is even more important and it’s that nostalgia can work in the future as well as the present. The researchers call it anticipatory nostalgia but all it really means is that, as well as thinking about the past, we should concentrate on having experiences that can be the nostalgia of the future. Simply think back to what you feel nostalgic about and try to do more of it in the present.
So, with that advice in mind, I’m feeling nostalgic about the old stars I saw at Glastonbury but I’m also discovering new music through Spotify - music that, who knows, I may feel nostalgic about in 50 years from now. I’m also feeling nostalgic about the time my godson was a wee boy, but I’m enjoying too hanging out with him as he becomes a young adult. In years to come, I will remember it.
And then there are my old friends. I feel nostalgic about our time at university, when we were young and before a pandemic picked one of us off. But I’m also enjoying the nostalgia-to-be: the fact that we’ve been friends for 30 years and still are and are enjoying each other’s company. I will probably remember this so I must remember to do more of it.
But sometimes, even when you try, you’re not sure if you’re getting it right. Over Christmas, I listened to Abba’s new album and it made me cry. Part of it was nostalgia obviously; suddenly, I remembered sitting on the floor with my cousin, aged 10, listening to Super Trouper. But I could feel the nostalgia working in good ways too. What was it exactly? Happiness and sadness at the same time? Joy tinged with melancholia, or the other way round? I’m not sure. But I do know that I’m glad it happened. I feel warmer now. I feel better. I feel fine.
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