Nostalgia: One of my favourite things about being human

A big fraction of my time in the seventh grade was spent collecting things. Not the things you can buy from the store, but the things you shove into the bottom of your backpack when there’s no garbage bin around.

Lollipop wrappers, poorly-made origami, sticky notes marked with gibberish written in coloured pencil. 

Nestled into the back corner of my closet is a box of these middle school remnants. Unneeded clutter to most, but to me, souvenirs of my past that I can’t get myself to throw out. 

Merriam-Webster describes nostalgia as ‘a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.’ What’s special about nostalgia is that it’s neither a sad nor happy feeling. It’s the thing that makes it possible to hold on yet also let go.

When we think of nostalgia, we automatically associate it with what was. But I believe it’s wrong to think nostalgia is solely a matter of the past. After all, the past was once our present. 

Beyond the reminiscing of old memories, I think nostalgia puts into our hands a life lesson: a life lesson about gratitude, awareness and living in the moment. 

When you experience nostalgia, it often comes with the lingering regret of not appreciating a certain time in your life enough. I’ve found that these moments are usually the ones that felt mundane and forgettable: the commute you’ve done a million times or the morning routine you could do solely off of muscle memory.

That’s the bittersweet thing about nostalgia. It rarely ever tells you that you’re going to miss a moment until it’s too late to take it back.

It’s hard not to wonder, then, if the things we deem ordinary today will eventually become the things we’d do anything to have one last time.

Before we know it, our day-to-day routines will become distant relics. The late-night deadlines, the early-morning study sessions, the iced coffees you insist you’ll have time to order before your lecture starts. It’s the seemingly unexciting things like these that have a weird way of making us miss them a few years down the road.

As humans, I think it’s second nature to long for the past. I constantly think about my fondest memories and wish I could relive them, even just temporarily.

But in this process of wishing, I also find a sign to take a closer look at everything around me: to take mental photographs for my future self, who is likely looking back at this moment as we speak.

• childhood
• life
• memories
• nostalgia