Nostalgic? You are not alone
When I was busy preparing a shopping list of essential items for our long lockdown, my husband was figuring out how to transport a 1980s Pac-Man console to our house. It’s the size of a photo booth. Now, given our easy access to a plethora of digital entertainment, I was surprised he wanted to spend time on a game that came out 40 years ago. But then I looked up the advertising description for a similar game machine online. It said: ‘‘Step back to a simpler time when the local arcade was king of entertainment’’.
Turns out hankering after a ‘‘simpler time’’ is very common. My husband said the game reconnected him with his past and the simple fish’n’chip shops of his youth.
This longing for the past has also led to weeknight viewings of Dad’s Army. The show reportedly set the comedy template for ‘‘overconfident incompetents’’. The very words make me think of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Both leaders appear to suffer from what is known in psychology as the Dunning-Kruger effect –the overconfidence of the ignorant.
Unfortunately, unlike the characters in Dad’s Army, the poor decisions made by these leaders will continue to have real tragic consequences.
Of course, my husband is not alone in feeling nostalgic. Soon after we went into lockdown, my 17-year-old son dug up some of his old favourite books, like the The Diary of a Wimpy Kid and binge-watched TV shows that he had long forgotten about – like The Adventure Time.
For me, nostalgia has been a constant companion since I moved to New Zealand. To someone from London, Christchurch 16 years ago felt like a city already under some sort of lockdown. I had never known city streets to be so empty, except in the summer of 1978 when martial law was declared in Tehran.
Of course, the new Kiwi-tised me relishes the peace and quiet – still, the nostalgic feelings that connect me to my past have not disappeared.
The word nostalgia is a late 18th-century one that has its origins in two Greek words: ‘‘nostos’’ and ‘‘algos’’. Nostos means ‘‘return home’’ and ‘‘algos’’ means pain. So think of nostalgia as an acute homesickness. Home, for many (sadly not all), is a symbol of security and certainty. And so it is no wonder that, as research shows, nostalgia is commonly triggered by uncertain and distressful circumstances associated with isolation, loneliness, boredom and discontinuity.
It is easy to glorify the old and overlook what is good about new and now. It is true that the current generation faces the serious threat of climate crisis, and is the only one that does not think its future will be better than its past. But it is also true that, across a host of measures, the world is significantly better than before. Children are least likely to die, adults are least likely to be illiterate, and people are least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.
The past appears reliable and comforting because it has already happened, so it cannot change or threaten us. Still, we must not lazily compare the best of the past with the worst of now.
We may dislike the Kardashians and Right-wing populism, or feel despondent at the plight of the planet, threat of nuclear war and the rise in mental health and suicide rates. But consider how lucky we are to be facing this pandemic in 2020 and not in 1918, when a quarter of the world’s population was infected by the Spanish flu and millions died.
So bask in nostalgia if you need to, but don’t forget to keep filling your store of good memories by making the most of the present. And whatever you do, keep safe and be kind.