I often ask myself why we as a society constantly try to enter this endless cycle of wanting to go back in time and bring back old styles or trends. Why do we romanticize the past instead of the present? This question has multiple answers, but the main one that stands out is that we want something to yearn for. Something positive to look back on when times get rough, and we have no one but our thoughts and memories to comfort us.
The habit of recycling old trends has been around forever and it is nothing new to us at all, but it feels as though this was intensified when Covid-19 hit and made the world go into quarantine.
This was a time where everyone had to be comfortable in their own presence and with the people around them for nearly two years. So many things were happening at once that we did not have much time to really process all of it at the moment. Later, when life moved on and we finally had the time to look back at it, that is when we saw all those memories clearly for the first time.
Obviously not every generation lived through a quarantine, but this experience is an example because difficulty and unfamiliarity can push us to feel nostalgic for earlier periods of life/the times when it felt simpler or more stable. This feeling also comes with realizing two more things: how beautiful a moment was, and how it can never exist again in the same way. It is almost like your mind is entering an old house that no longer belongs to you. Every room is the same: the places, the smells, the people, and the songs but you are the one that’s different now.
Nostalgia gives us a sense of peace when times are difficult. In these trying times find something to take the stress off of you.
