For most of us, childhood was the simplest and easiest period of our lives. Mom and Dad made all of our decisions for us, we had plenty of free time to play sports, hang out with friends and focus on our hobbies. And we felt invincible! There was no such thing as feeling sore after spending a day in the sun swimming or cycling for hours on end around the neighborhood. Now, it’s hard to even remember a day when I didn’t have back pain!
If you had a special childhood, it makes sense to want to look back on those beautiful memories every now and then. But Sam Brodsky at WonderMind pointed out that it seems like everyone has been incredibly nostalgic over the past few years. So why is that? Well, according to existential psychologist Clay Routledge, PhD, nostalgia is actually instinctual.
Dr. Routlege notes that nostalgia is often an automatic response when we see, smell or hear something that takes us back to the past. Smells, in particular, have an incredible ability to transport us back to Grandma’s house on a summer evening, your 3rd grade classroom or the home you grew up in.
And when we hear a song that immediately reminds us of a strong memory, we don’t even have to try to think about the past. Our mind instantly goes there because we associate that song with prom night, that film with the first date you ever went on or that character with the Christmas you had the flu.
Nostalgia can also serve a practical purpose when we use it as a coping mechanism. Dr. Routledge explains that it can help us get through tough times, such as the pandemic or the loss of a loved one, if we use it to remember a time when we were much happier and life was much simpler. Watching your favorite movie from childhood might take you back to when you were full of joy and hope and truly believed you were capable of accomplishing anything. In this way, nostalgia can sometimes prevent us from spiraling.
At the same time, nostalgia can often bring people together. Just like the memes on this list, being reminded of a childhood experience you loved, and finding out that thousands of other people feel the same way, can make you feel closer to them. You’re not the only person who remembers that specific salty snack or that one episode of Rugrats. It can be comforting to know that you have something in common with all of these other people from your generation.
National Geographic also notes that our brains are hardwired to crave nostalgia. “Familiar media from our past brings us emotional comfort, but it also meets a cognitive need: it encourages the belief that things will get better because they’ve been good before,” Krystine Batcho, a psychology professor at LeMoyne College, told National Geographic.
However, when we look back on the past, we have to be careful not to only view it through rose-colored glasses. We tend to focus on the best parts of our own history, whether that be a previous romantic relationship, former job or friendship that fizzled out. But this can make a person feel less satisfied with their current situation, even if there were some terrible aspects of the past and are some wonderful aspects of where they are now.
