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Nostalgia doesn’t need real memories - an imagined past works as well | Aeon Essays
Having nostalgic thoughts about the past that one hasn’t directly experienced or lived through is called _Anemoia_.
The cognitive component of nostalgia is often a mental simulation, and may not have happened for real in the lifetime of the reminiscing person.
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We predict what the future will look like by using our memories. This is how actions we do repeatedly become routine. For example, you have an ideas of what your day will look like at work tomorrow based on what your day was like today, and all the other days you’ve spent working.
But memory also helps people predict what it will be like to do things they haven’t done before.
An evidence that memory and imagining the future might go hand in hand comes from research related to amnesia patients. Studies show that when they lose their pasts, it seems they lose their futures as well.
Functional MRI scans made possible for researchers to discover that many of the same brain structures are involved in both remembering and forecasting.
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Key Ideas
It is the sentimentality of our past, usually for a particular time and place associated with positive emotions, etched in our memories. Historical texts state it was termed as homesickness ...
The feeling of nostalgia is like traveling in a time machine. The activities that were once cherished are no longer done, and the world that is remembered no longer exists.
Nostalgia can be a form of self-deception, giving a rosy tint to the past, creating a paradise out of the moments of our lived lives.
Deep nostalgia fosters a sense of serene melancholy and spiritual longing.
The deepest form of suffering is a feeling of extreme dissatisfaction about the impermanence and the insubstantiality of everything around us.
Buddhism mentions suffering as inevitable as long as there is desire, lust and a sense of coveting/craving in our lives. Once we grasp this fully, we stop craving and struggling in hope and fear.
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However, whenever it is not possible to combine the two or practice traditional social techniques. then you might want to consider the safest option: the nontraditional social strategies.
By watching movies, listening to songs, or just reflecting on our relationships, we actually help repair and rediscover who is really important to us and we will, therefore, be even more grateful when given the chance to meet up again with those very persons.