The cure for nostalgia
By: Abdul Ahmed
Tags: Stoicism, Philosophy Of Mind

To most, my hostility towards nostalgia might seem misplaced but for somebody that subscribes to stoicism, or at least a light version of it, the emotional response is ruthlessly draws from me is maddening. My first and most potent encounter with it occurred four years ago after graduating sixth form (high school).

Somewhere on my journey in high school I became a subscriber to the philosophy of stoicism and although I hadn’t fully explored what it meant to be a stoic, one thing I knew for certain at that time, and have since confirmed, is that displaying an emotion reinforces it. I truly believed that if I could get this under control, I could become emotionally immovable in the face of negative events. Considering that I had success doing this for many years, it was unsettling to feel the undeniable pull of nostalgia when it was time to graduate. Walking along a path that I had travelled down thousands of times now suddenly awoke memories that had been long since forgotten. The sights that I had paid no attention to for years suddenly forced a feeling of sentimentality in my heart.

Four years and many more unsolicited dances with nostalgia later, I have a much better understanding of why it grasps us so relentlessly. I imagine that slightly different lessons would be taken by different people in these same instances but what I have taken from them all is that nostalgia is an existential fear.

There are many different views in the world on what makes a person behave the way that they do; our unique biological compositions, deities that bless us with their likeness, or even the position and alignment of astronomical bodies in outer space. Most people, however, will appreciate that a person is some function of their past experiences and their interpretations of them. This is why I believe we feel a sense of loss that these memories, and us by extension, will fade away in time when we leave places that we once called home. Abandoning the familiar environment eliminates the possibility that we will have memories triggered by spatial reminders, like a path we always walk down or a sight we always see. The limits of our ability to remember mean that pieces of ourselves will slowly be forgotten over our lifetimes. Leaving an environment as part of a cohort, with whom you remain in contact, makes holding onto these memories easier because they act as extra vessels with whom we can share the memorial load and prevent small pieces of ourselves from being washed away like tears in rain.

This theory, too, is why when we depart an environment after having had meaningful experiences there, whether those experiences were positive, or negative is irrelevant to our feelings of nostalgia. Instead, it is the intensity of the emotions we felt that is paramount because it follows that more intense events will represent larger portions of marble that were chipped away from the unfinished sculpture that is our current selves. If you have ever been able to fondly reminisce on something like an arduous exam period which you did not believe you would ever see the end of, then you will understand this very well.

So how do we break free of the clutches of this fear? Well, it appears we have to steer into the skid and relive as many of our triumphs and failures with as many generous ears as we possibly can before departure day arrives. Share your memoirs, reminisce and turn those closest to you into conduits that will store sections of your life going forward.

Those who view this emotional masturbation of this kind as unacceptable should take solace in this fact: an environment’s capacity to accommodate significant moments is not hindered by the memories it has already allowed to fade over time. If we are not so fortunate as to have our experiences echo through time, as is done for so few, then we can at the very least be thankful that those that come after us can form their own versions of our treasured memories in the same environments. Some of the most wondrous locations in the world are those that have many known legendary stories but what makes places like The Colosseum special is imagining the untold stories of those that occupied it. Though we may not contribute to the futures of locations as grand as this, we should consider it an honour to contribute at all.