Cry all you want: Future Nostalgia Ronja Chiara

Cry all you want: Future Nostalgia

The millennial mantra of living in the now has let many of us down recently. Yolo my ass. One more Zoom and we might just collectively snap. Why fullon wallowing in nostalgia might be exactly what we need right now. About looking back towards a brighter future…

Nostalgia gets a bad rep. The French being the French (so dramatic beyond reason), have been known to accuse the nostalgic among us of spending their lifetime dying – les nostalgiques passent leur vie á mourir – and they are hardly alone with this sentiment. Often linked to depression, Johannes Hoffer, the Swiss doctor who coined the term nostalgia back in 1688 even defined it as “(…) a neurological disease of essentially demonic cause”. While that sounds pretty dark, nostalgia has its place and yes, you getting all teary-eyed when thinking back to your first love does not make you a nut job. It’s normal, healing even. Let me explain…

Times change. With the world grinding to a halt at the onset of the pandemic, we have been slapped in the face with a lot of (hopefully temporary) change. Some might have lost loved ones, or on the lighter side had to cancel trips and have not had the opportunity to hug their relatives in almost a year. Some might simply miss the twentysomething ritual of getting shit-faced to party with a bunch of attractive strangers. Whatever the scope of change you are experiencing right now might be – this cocktail of upheaval and uncertainty equals one thing only: a whole lot of stress.

This is where nostalgia comes in. In times like these, looking back on good times can be comforting. Every time we ponder our past and ask ourselves how we handled tough situations back then, we strengthen our sense of self. Who were we back then? What and who gave us joy? Nostalgia is the invisible string connecting past versions of ourselves to the person we are in this very moment. Like a neat bow tying together all the experiences that make up who we are today.

Times past. A friend put it well when I asked her to define nostalgia for me: “I would define nostalgia as an ode to the deliberately unforgotten. An emotion, an intense feeling of reliving times gone by. Often bittersweet, usually untimely and unprompted, provoked by the subconscious reminding us of how things once were”. Virtually anything can trigger feelings of nostalgia: an old photograph, a familiar scent or, in my case a detailed record of how embarrassing a person I have been throughout my life.

Let me explain. During what constitutes a summer vacation in a world paralyzed by a pandemic – so a whole lot of quality time spent with family – I stumbled upon a box I had carefully taped shut before I moved out. And for good reason I might add. Filled to the brim with old journals, a rollercoaster of messy teenage thoughts awaited me. Flicking through the pages, I found myself sucked into a nostalgia spiral of epic proportions (My Tamagotchi! My first kiss! My first solo trip! The day we picked up our dog!), as I cringed my way through one recurring

theme: boys, love, and the boys I was in love with. Skimming my pubescent thoughts led me to the conclusion that I might be Benjamin-buttoning in the love department. Whereas things in 7th grade were simple and relationships could be started by secretly slipping your crush a note reading: “Do you love me? Yes, No, Maybe”, times have changed. The only two places where one might meet a new love interest nowadays is Tinder, or on one of those anti-government, antiCovid restrictions demonstrations. And that’s just not my crowd.

In vino veritas. After many wine fueled conversations with friends we came to the conclusion that the Covid experience seems to trigger feelings of nostalgia for all things past, and especially our first loves.

“I think about him when I’m reminded of him, for instance if I see someone wearing a blue waterproof coat, or sometimes I’ll be speaking with someone who laughs with their eyes closed in the same way he did”.

Triggered. Retrieval cues such as a familiar laugh can unleash a flash of longlost memories. This might explain why, with the onset of the pandemic, came a flood of messages. Within my friend group, old lovers and summer flings came out of the woodworks during this time. Why you ask? Because big life events cause us to pause, look back to retrace our steps. When the now looks bleak, getting lost in gold-tinged memories of times past provides comfort. And what’s better than the feeling of falling in love? Nostalgia, despite its reputation, is an overwhelmingly positive emotion – just what we need in right now.

Future Nostalgia. Our collective experience can be summed up with the title of Dua Lipa’s aptly titled 2020 record Future Nostalgia, the collective mourning of the loss of Vorfreude. The German term loosely translating to anticipation happiness, encapsulates what´s gone missing from our lives when the virus stepped in. Everchanging restrictions and recurrent lockdowns make it virtually impossible to plan ahead. In normal times Vorfreude is the thing that gets us through all the inevitable rough patches. Nostalgia then is the other side of the coin: if you can’t go forward, you look back.

To be more human. Change in this magnitude is threatening on a psychological level, because all that perceived sense of control evaporates in an instant. Without much to look forward to with certainty, we look to the past. By going back, we gather strength for right now and what’s still to come. Contrary to the present notion that living in the past prevents you from moving on, pondering positive memories can actually make you more optimistic for what lies ahead. Nostalgia, it turns out is not quite as destructive an emotion as its reputation suggests. A New York Times article even boasts that it can make us more generous, tolerant and, most importantly, a bit more human.

You might miss this. So the next time you find yourself stuck in a zoom lecture, staring at a mosaic of faces, objected to the constant uhm-uhm-uhm of your professors, think about how much worse this would be in person. Soon there will come a time when you will have to subject yourselves to peoples horrible breath (Gotta love masks!) and you will be back to wondering whether professors are legally bound to dress like absolute mad (wo)men. As outlandish as it might seem right now, when this is all said and done you might feel nostalgia for right now. What´s to miss, you ask? Lectures in bed, the joy of sporting PJs all day long, judging your classmates horrific interior tastes, munching on crunchy snacks to your hearts content (praised be the mute button!). You´ll miss how happy you were to spend time that one friend, how the oh-so-hated restriction of movement gave you the opportunity to really explore your neighborhood, how you learned how to make killer meszal cocktails at home, how your mailbox was filled to the brim with cards from friends and family…

Zut alors! In conclusion, the French had it wrong all along (duh!), and experiencing feelings of nostalgia does not actually mean you are slowly dying on the inside. We might be nostalgic for the future we have lost for now, but nostalgia is here to remind us of who we´ve been and who we can become. To misquote Wendi Rene: “After laughter comes tears (of joy)”. ■

Writer: Ronja Chiara

ronjachiarabillik@live.de @ronjachiara

Illustrations: Nathalie Coursell

@Nathaliecourselll nathalie.coursell@hotmail.com