Does anybody else struggle with nostalgia?

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It depends on my mood. Most of the time I feel great and can handle all types of memories. But when I'm depressed, those same memories affect me greatly.

What I've learned from this is that we view reality through a different lens depending on our mental state. All of it is illusion.

Cypher: “I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”

For me, it's mostly wondering what would have happened had I made different decisions early in my life. I am mostly nostalgic for the 1970s because of fleeting experiences I can't stop thinking about. A movie or TV show that accurately depicts life in the 1970s will remind me of these things.

But at the same time, I get fed up with all the nostalgia stuff aimed at people my age in the media. By and large, I prefer living in the present day. There are actually many advances that make life better for older people. I get tired of being told how much better life was in the old days. Except for being younger, it wasn't really better. But most people seem to disagree.

As a Gen Xer, Everything about Austin Powers brings me back to 1997. I was doing well back than. That was the year before I had my massive breakdown. The movies were good and the TV shows were good.

Yeah, I also am leaning towards the 90's when I get nostalgia because I actually had a life back then compare to now when I'm just existing.

I fell back on nostalgia when I lost a very good friend. Now when I see those items I bought, it has lost the comforting effect. The good news is that I am in a happy place again, so it doesn't matter.

I'm happy to know you're in a good place

Thank you. Much appreciated.

it's a consistent battle with myself regarding this ever since the cutoff point of what i considered my "old life" hitting around when i was 12 years old. sometimes it can be rewarding if i channel the right memories but a lot of the time it's me reminiscing positive memories regarding experiences i'll never have again or me reminiscing negative memories that either affected me greatly back when or greatly right now/more recently. it's a constant pain even if i can handle it well sometimes i guess if it's the right time of day. it's difficult.

i'd say i struggle with it. i kind of live off of it these days considering how uneventful/mundane life is for me right now and how depressed i get kinda often because of it. no idea what to do about it

People are nostalgic because they're burned out by the present and terrified of the future. But people tend to have their nostalgia goggles on too tight, because I hear younger people being all nostalgic for the earlier 2000s and clearly they don't remember 9/11 or weren't even born yet.

I once read a Cathy comic strip where Cathy's mom tells her that nostalgia is just a harmless fad, but Cathy tells her to look around herself, they're surrounded by stuff from the 1950s and 60s, everyone is terrified of the future. Cathy's mom cheerfully tells her the future is in the hands of the children. Then Cathy says, "THE CHILDREN ARE ALL CARRYING DINOSAURS!".

This strip was in the mid-late 1990s, so because of Jurassic Park, indeed, everything was dinosaurs and more dinosaurs. Bill Watterson even stopped making dinosaur-themed comics for Calvin and Hobbes for a while because of it, not wanting Calvin's vivid imagination about them appear less imaginative. But yes, I still remember the awful doomsday anxiety I would get, mostly because of Y2K. But now we've got so many things hanging over us that would make Y2K look like a tea party, if it actually happened. Which then put us all in a false sense of security.

I am terrified of the future.

I am not terrified of the future in general (as I don't know how much of it I'm live to experience) but greatly concerned about my immediate future as I have a couple of family matters I must get sorted and I feel very alone (although that is somewhat of an exaggeration).

It's funny how I constantly lament what has since passed me by, and now that I've returned to this site I find this topic waiting for me. Almost like I was meant to find it.

I struggle with this a LOT. I find myself missing the days when I was younger, how exciting the world seemed; all of the advancement in tech, the cool cartoons and anime, the video games that just seemed to be constantly improving in terms of graphics, gameplay and scope with each generation, the television shows and movies that all added new beats to the human experience and the culture of a country, the idea that one could become successful if they worked hard enough... I really do miss that feeling and how the world was.

It just hurts to know that it's all been one big, carefully constructed lie by a bunch of powerful cultists at the top seeking to destroy all of us, and it's been like that even before it became obvious that it was always fake and that was always the plan.

And yet despite ALL of that, I still wish I could go back and experience that world again. The world we've left behind as we entered a world engineered to spiral out of control and demoralize everyone. I want to remember some of the things I've since lost, because even though I know my childhood wasn't always the happiest one, I still cherish it because I grew up with parents who loved me and I was in relative security for most of my younger years. I want to enjoy the world as it once was; a time of hope for the future, a time of excitement, a time of experimentation, a time of progress...

Because I hate what the world is becoming. And I so dearly wish I could change it from what it is right now.

Nostalgia used to be a big thing for me when I was younger. Now I prefer to live in the present.

I hope your situation improves.

Thanks! I'm dealing with it, but saying anything more would greatly deviate from the topic of nostalgia.