Nostalgia: powerful, poignant — and a painkiller

While love, fear, or anger might move and evoke great passion, nostalgia lies in a much subtler place.

• It is the heart-aching reminiscence of your parents singing you to sleep.
• It is in the laughter of friends we once knew, but which now echoes into an empty space.
• It is in first love, childhood pets, movie nights, Christmas mornings, and final goodbyes.
• It is a great joy, shadowed with sadness and longing. It is that dark well of poignancy that makes you feel lonely and without something you once had.
• It is the tear-soaked smile of happy times, no longer here.

The older we get, the more we realize that life is made of episodes and stages. There are facets of ourselves that are more or less constant, but who we are today can feel strangely remote from our childhood. We look at our past like some oddly familiar story to reread.

Hence, there is a disconnect and alienation that comes with nostalgia. We look back on our previous selves and we feel as if we have changed. We see that our path has wandered far from its original way, that we hardly know who we once were, or who we are now.

The reason nostalgia is so peculiar is that it’s really hard to say if it’s good or bad. The reminiscence of past happiness feels nice, but the longing and sense of absence it leaves can be deeply upsetting. What’s interesting, though, is a recent study has shown that nostalgia can also make pain more bearable. It even goes some way to numbing that pain altogether.

Nostalgia promotes psychological wellbeing, increases physical comfort, and reduces distress, apart from relieving pain.