A blessing or a curse?

“You can have it all. Just not all at once.”

-Oprah Winfrey

Nostalgia is a feeling that can only be felt. Those who have not experienced it will only know of it when they receive it. It cannot be described as it is too complicated to describe through simple feelings and elusive to the mind. Although it can be different for different people, most would say that it is a sort of emptiness, a void within them when they see something that brings back memories of when they had that thing or did that action. Though it cannot be described through feelings, the best way to describe it is through examples of life that feel similarly.

Some would say it is an emptiness that is sad, while some would describe it as almost a feeling of peacefulness. It is almost like the quiet after a death or the silence of a field after war. For some people that will only hold onto the feeling of the loss of a person, or the battles that were fought in the field, but others would think of the calmness that the person must have felt as they drifted to sleep for the last time, or the silence now that there is no longer shots being fired or swords being clashed together in the field. 

It is like the feeling that swells if your friends have just left a party and it is only you there, sitting amongst the mountains of responsibilities that have set in now that you are alone with yourself. The abnormal quietness now that music isn’t blasting or people aren’t yelling and chatting. Again, some think that the quiet feels weighted, pressing down on them until they wish to shrink away into nothingness while some admire the peace that washes over the house. 

Nostalgia is the silence of a forest after a devastating fire, the birds no longer chirping, the once green ground now covered in a dark black ash, and the small skeleton of an animal that wasn’t able to escape. But through that ash and skeletons and silence, the ground has been fertilized by the ash and the greenest sprouts begin to push the darkness and death away, once again breathing life into the dark landscape. 

Nostalgia, most simply put, is the remembrance of the past through feeling. It can happen when being at a place that you used to go to, but no longer do. It can happen when seeing something that belonged to you, maybe it flooded you with so much joy so long ago that it seems like the ancient past. It could be words, maybe some that you once heard from a teacher now long gone, or so old that they look like an ancient mummy. It could be a smell, one that reminds you of your mothers cooking or your fathers old car. It could just be seeing someone or something that was once somewhere else entirely or maybe it’s in the same place just everything about it or around it has changed. It could make you feel endangered or safe. Feel insignificant and small or like the world revolves around you. Feel empty and alone or like you are surrounded by those who walked alongside you, whether they be friends, family, strangers, or lovers. It truly is something that can only be experienced. I tried my best to describe it to you, so go and find it.

Don’t let the future stay the future

You might not be there to see it