Feature
Shajara Khan
Return
Illustration by Stephanie Ung
Analysing how nostalgia plays into how we establish and maintain connections with the spaces that we occupy.
Nostalgic Nostalgic about about nostalgia nostalgia
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Shajara Khan
Let me set the scene for you. It is Wednesday morning, and I am sitting at my desk. I’m scrolling through Reddit on my laptop when I see a subreddit pop up. It’s called r/nostalgia. It seems to contain a treasure trove of pre-Y2K pop culture. As I scroll through this subreddit, there are references that I am vaguely aware of, some that are completely lost to me, but none that give me that visceral jolt of “oh yeah, that was the best! I miss that…” For some people, nostalgia helps them to remember that good times will always exist despite the bad times. Mere association can trigger nostalgia. The first four notes of a song, the hint of an aroma lingering in the air, or the silhouette of the person. Despite the strength of some sensory stimuli, with smell being the strongest sense, memory itself is a very finicky thing. I remember when I was taking a psychology course during my undergraduate degree and one of the topics revolved around memory. The lecturer explained that memory is not as accurate as we often believe it to be. Our memories can indeed fail us. The same foods we begged for in our childhood and devoured like they were ambrosia, sometimes taste lacklustre in adulthood. Although this could also be because the taste experiences of adults literally differ from when we are children.
