“Nostalgia is something that is both cosy and comforting but also deceptive and an illusion”

When people hear the word nostalgia, for some reason it seems like it is always a very soothing occurrence. I don’t know if its just how the word sounds when spoken aloud, or if this comforting idea has been drilled into every person from a young age; but something about it relaxes you. Ultimately, it is a memory, a dream of the past where anything could have happened, you could have ridden a bike for the first time, gone on holiday, nailed an exam. It seems like something positive. Simply typing the word “nostalgia” into google with no prompts or filters – these are the first 5 images to be shown.

But is nostalgic thought always this perfect? You often hear adults mention “the good ol’ days” of when they were children and teenagers, going out to party, relaxing without a care in the world. But how good were these “ol’ days”? Even just 20 years ago, there was excessive racism and misogyny and people genuinely feared to be themselves in society. Today, this stuff still exists but everything considered normal then is now the underground opinion, it occasionally shows itself but genuinely people are more free to live the way that they want to.

“Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days” – Doug Larson

This quote from Doug Larson emphasises how nostalgia truly is. It is a memory and people remember different things in their own completely unique ways. It’s very cynical to think like this, but our own memory lies to us, it attempts to show us the best aspects of an event and almost entirely skips over the bad things; but sometimes a catastrophic event can not be overlooked. Therefore, aren’t bad memories also a form of nostalgia, or do people have a different name specifically for them? Past traumas? Unimportant memories?