# Nostalgia



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

What makes you feel nostalgic? Do you like the feeling? Is it happy or sad? ect.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Popular music of the sixties -- everything from the Beachboys to the Beatles to the Mothers of Invention. Certain songs have a way of putting me into a place and time without even thinking about it. One is John Lennon singing "I Am the Walrus." December, 1968(?), Vancouver, snowing lightly, a few Christmas lights are already up, on my way to early morning hockey practice and someone's playing the song on the radio. It's happy except for what happened to John Lennon ...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I'm generally immune to nostalgia, but _I Almost Cut My Hair_ from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's Deja Vu album sometimes gets to me.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I remember a Dr. Who episode (The Weeping Angels), where the main character said that sad is happy for deep people. I know what that means; I have so many great memories that bring joy but bring me to tears at the same time because they'll never happen again. 

Last night I heard an old group from the late '60s called Jo Mama. The style of music and the '60s production value transported me back to the early '70s, listening to rock music on a cheap record player with my then-girlfriend. 

Listening to big band music gets to me also, because I used to play in bands and watch people my parents' age dance to it, and I loved doing something that made them feel good. 

I guess music is what does that kind of thing to me the most.


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2020)

This song from an otherwise extremely cheesy film "*An Affair to Remember*" and symbolic, to me, of post-war optimism and innocence in the USA. I can also relate to that in my own country. "*Tiny Scout*" sung by a chorus of the cutest kids - I'm only sorry the images don't accompany this song - obviously lifted from a soundtrack. It's the kind of sentiment found in those 1950s TV sitcoms like "My Three Sons" and, of course, The Mickey Mouse Club. All these things were a feature of my childhood when safety was the order of the day for middle class families. It's the optimism which attracts me:


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Synthesizer music and movies from the 80's when I was growing up. But more than that are natural landscapes, and lighting. Even though I wasn't around then, 60's folkish music also puts me in a certain mood, probably when the older folks would play it, which I also got into later.


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2020)

I don't know about others here, but I always find certain smells rush me back to my childhood and youth and the reason for this remains enigmatic.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

I think that nostalgia ain't what it used to be . . . .


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Christabel said:


> I don't know about others here, but I always find certain smells rush me back to my childhood and youth and the reason for this remains enigmatic.


In the Netherlands Open Air Museum there is a 'Green Cross' building (a public health control institute where children got their injections against measles etc.). When you enter the building you immediately will strongly smell lysol and hear babies' crying and singing of a lone bather in the bath house section. (It's all very cleverly reproduced 'reality'). All these sensory effects really have such a magical back-to-the-future retro making-you-feel-like-you-were-young transportation, unbelievable!


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

pianozach said:


> I think that nostalgia ain't what it used to be . . . .


Drat, you beat me to it with that statement. :lol:


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

pianozach said:


> I think that nostalgia ain't what it used to be . . . .





Barbebleu said:


> Drat, you beat me to it with that statement. :lol:


Why?


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

adriesba said:


> Why?


Because the statement that nostalgia isn't what it used to be, is itself not what it used to be; nor is the statement that nostalgia isn't what it used to be is itself not what it used to be, currently seen as being itself what it used to be, given the gradual evolution of society in the ... direction of ... whatever ... zzzzzzzzzzzz  ......................................

(I'd rather go to sleep than derail this thread any further, and I wholeheartedly wish that we could just get back to nostalgia _per se_, in and as such :angel


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

We remember all the youthful positives indirectly as good feelings, but we don't readily remember (how poor we were when first married) how financially insecure we were. My parents were concerned about us, but we didn't dwell on it. We were blissful.


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## Guest (Nov 6, 2020)

Luchesi said:


> We remember all the youthful positives indirectly as good feelings, but we don't readily remember (how poor we were when first married) how financially insecure we were. My parents were concerned about us, but we didn't dwell on it. We were blissful.


We reminisce with our friends about the poverty of our early married/childbearing years!! Often this raises laughs but it didn't seem all that funny at the time. My husband having to borrow his father's Ford Anglia (Ford Angrier, I called it) because he was too poor to buy a car when I first met him. Having to ring the (future) father-in-law to borrow the car; it seems a world away today. Walking 2km to the local rail station for the one-hour trip into the Sydney CBD. My husband did that 5 days a week; rain, hail or shine. I didn't have to travel that far as my job in TV was closer.

Quite a while before we were married he took me up to show me his house (mmm; none of my girlfriends' beaux had a house!!) and shortly after his first wife had absconded to live in New Zealand. It seemed an endless walk from the station that night..."how much longer?" I said. "You've conned me; there is no house...it's a phantom house". We laughed like anything on that rainy walk. Upon arrival I had to be diplomatic about the 3 different colours of the carpets from one section of the house to the other..."er, it's nice..". Another round of laughter. My husband has played routine practical jokes on me over the years, but his first house was certainly no joke.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

"Walking 2km to the local rail station for the one-hour trip into the Sydney CBD.” 


Wow, what time did he have to get up? That’s so stressful on the body, after months and months.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Movies from 80s, old clothes and books...The scent...Old buildings, even decaying...Mum's and our familys old pictures...


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## Guest (Nov 6, 2020)

Luchesi said:


> "Walking 2km to the local rail station for the one-hour trip into the Sydney CBD."
> 
> Wow, what time did he have to get up? That's so stressful on the body, after months and months.


6am start; home by 7pm. Five days a week. When he worked overtime it was much later than that (and he got no pay for overtime). I was home with ankle-biters and these were long days for me too.

The younger generation today won't tolerate those travel times and constantly complain about the M$1.5 price tag for a home closer to the Sydney CBD. Ours was a modest little home but a happy one.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Jogging makes me weepy and nostalgic, thinking "Damn, I used to be able to do this. Where did it all go wrong?"


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Back in March, I wrote this on a similar thread. nostalgia ain't what it used to be



> I'm very vulnerable to nostalgia. I'm always thinking of the past, in a kind of sentimental and yearning way. I am realistic enough to realize that I can't go back, and I am not paralyzed by the future. But I look upon my past with a sense of longing and what-ifs.
> 
> I listen to a lot of music from the 1960s, 1970s, and some music from the 1980s. I was born in the 1960s. In the 1980s I was listening to music from the 1960s and 1970s. I have never really listened to contemporary music at any point in my life.
> 
> ...


I'm still vulnerable to nostalgic thoughts.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Today, the word nostalgia has a more positive connotation. As I look back at my past, I have many fond nostalgic memories, but some of it not so much. I'm trying not to count my regrets, but I have a few that I can't seem to let go of.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

senza sordino said:


> Today, the word nostalgia has a more positive connotation. As I look back at my past, I have many fond nostalgic memories, but some of it not so much. I'm trying not to count my regrets, but I have a few that I can't seem to let go of.


Yes, stress is the silent killer. Bad thoughts, bad thinking, bad outlooks.

It's been around so long that it's had a natural selection effect upon young people so that the body has evolved to produce antioxidants.

"Oxidative stres_s_ plays a pivotal role in various pathological conditions, including hypertension, pulmonary hypertension, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease, with high levels of oxidative stress in target organs such as the heart, pancreas, kidney, and lung."


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

I was ''nostalgic'' even as a kid...Me and my sister used to take my grandmas old traditional clothes and jewelry and muse about it for hours...A certain scent or a sound can even today trigger a ''Pavlov reaction'' in me...Both my mum and dad were pretty nostalgic as well, collecting old furniture, paintings, figures, coins, post marks...


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## Guest (Nov 8, 2020)

Nostalgia is a compelling impulse; as we age it frames entirely who we are and why. This is why it's so confusing for people who discover later on that they're adopted and are desperate to find out all about it. But some of us are more nostalgic than others and this can sometimes become unhelpful for the individual. We can look back to earlier times only to discover that the period we're now living in falls somewhat short; this leads to regret and disillusionment about the way society has gone. These negative thoughts arise through nostalgia as a consequence of present dissatisfaction. We always precariously balance good and bad in this capricious existence of ours; today the media uses the old 'loud hailer' to shout at us about our woes, our shortcomings, our depredations and excesses and a certain political class goes along with that because they need to make us better people. As somebody recently said to me, "they shine a light into our eyes" and "tell us where we're falling short" and how we can be converted into the correct ways of thinking. 

Yes, I'm nostalgic for the days when it was the church which did all that.


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## Alinde (Feb 8, 2020)

I feel nostalgia for people I loved who are no longer with us and for relationships that I didn't value enough to nurture. But times change and it's been a truism since the days of Horace that we change with them.

I am profoundly grateful for scientific/technological and social change and take as intelligent (as I am able) interest in their further development. I wouldn't go back in time for quids.


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2020)

Alinde said:


> I feel nostalgia for people I loved who are no longer with us and for relationships that I didn't value enough to nurture. But times change and it's been a truism since the days of Horace that we change with them.
> 
> I am profoundly grateful for scientific/technological and social change and take as intelligent (as I am able) interest in their further development. I wouldn't go back in time for quids.


Where would we be without the internet, chemotherapy, compact discs, home stereo systems, air travel, safe and relatively cheap cars, public transport and organ transplantation. Absolutely amazing and in my lifetime.










What's not to love??!! A mighty bird of power and elegance.

I'm nostalgic for earlier eras when people were civil to each other and hatred wasn't ubiquitous.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

We live in the best of all possible worlds.


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2020)

Strange Magic said:


> We live in the best of all possible worlds.


Totally agree, except for the behaviours I mentioned. One only has to read Dickens to know how the 'other half' lived not so very long ago. It isn't pretty.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Christabel said:


> Totally agree, except for the behaviours I mentioned. One only has to read Dickens to know how the 'other half' lived not so very long ago. It isn't pretty.


One need only to watch or read the news today to see how the other half lives. It isn't pretty.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

My nostalgy or melancholy perhaps describes the best my favorite quote from childhood


> ''The ship and all in it are imbued with the spirit of Eld. The crew glide to and fro like the ghosts of buried centuries, their eyes have an eager and uneasy meaning, and when their figures fall athwart my path in the wild glare of the battle-latterns, I feel as I have never felt before, although I have been all my life a dealer in antiquities, and have imbibed the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin. ''


From https://poestories.com/read/manuscript
I was only 13 or something when I first read this story...


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

My mum was pretty old-fashioned, an ''old soul'' even when young so watching old movies and listening to old music although it brings me lots of joy also tears me apart when I remember she is no longer with us...


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