Imagine you woke up this morning and somehow ended up back in 1985. You reach for a can of Aqua Net and tease your hair as tall as physically possible. The radio kicks on and Madonna is blasting through the speakers.
You throw on a windbreaker, grab a Pop-Tart on the way out the door, and head off to meet your friends at the arcade. Sounds like a pretty solid morning to us.
Sadly, none of us actually have a time machine tucked away in the garage. Reminiscing is about as close as we can get, and it usually comes with a soft ache. That feeling even has a name with a pretty interesting origin story.
According to Time magazine, the word “nostalgia” was coined all the way back in the 1600s by a Swiss medical student. He used it to describe homesick soldiers fighting in European wars, and it basically translates to a kind of pain about returning home.
For a long stretch of history, people genuinely thought nostalgia was a medical problem. Clay Routledge, a psychologist at the Human Flourishing Lab, told Time it was “originally thought of as a brain disease.”
Some of the early theories were pretty out there. Doctors floated ideas about demonic forces being at play, and at one point folks even blamed the clanging of cowbells for damaging soldiers’ inner ears. Scholars kept treating that yearning feeling like something dangerous for centuries after.
Turns out they had it backwards. Newer research, including studies Routledge himself has led, shows that missing the past can actually be really good for you. It helps you feel more connected to the people around you and softens judgment toward folks who might seem different from you.
Leaning into old memories can also boost your self-esteem and add a real sense of meaning to your everyday life. Some studies even suggest it can make you a little happier overall.
As much as nostalgia belongs to the past, though, it has a way of pointing us to the future. Someone might think back on summers spent with a grandma who’s no longer around, feel that familiar pang of sadness, and then use those memories as motivation to build something similar with their own kids.
As Routledge put it, “It’s looking backwards, but it’s because you want ideas for how to move forward.” Pretty cool way to reframe the whole thing.
#17 I Remember Warming Myself Infront Of This On A Winter Morning Before School
So besides scrolling through throwback posts like the ones on this list, there are some fun ways to really soak up that warm fuzzy feeling. One easy option is putting together a playlist of songs from your teens and twenties, since that’s the music most people gravitate toward for the rest of their lives.
Think “Take On Me” by a-ha, a bit of Whitney Houston, some Prince, maybe “Livin’ on a Prayer” for good measure.
