The Dangers of Nostalgia

Dangers of Nostalgia

"Nostalgia" is so often said with that sort of simpering, "good ol' days", harkening back to the time when things were simple and clean and wonderful. They never tell you about the dangers of Nostalgia, the pain that blind-sides you, the hurt that hunts you down in your beautiful, mundane life and sticks a fork in your hand, heart or eye and says, "you think you control your memory but really your memory controls you." Maybe you should think of Nostalgia as a brother to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The way that the memory is triggered has to be similar; smell, sound, sight. Although some find a relief or a release in Nostalgia, there are others who find it like being mugged by their memory, their carefully constructed piece of mind stolen and them left bereft, shaking.

The Ministry of Pain- Ugresic

p. 226

"Words like 'phantom limb syndrom' or 'nostalgia' are arbitrary lexical labels meant to denote the complex emotional blow that comes of loss and the impossibility of return. They imply that it makes virtually no difference whether we make our peace with the loss or experience relief at being able to let go of the past or of the desire to return to it. Because the blow does not lose its intensity thereby. Nostalgia, if that's the word for it, is a brutal, insidious assailant who favours the ambush approach, who attacks when we least expect him and goes straight for the solar plexus. Nostalgia always wears a mask and, o irony of ironies, we are only its chance victim. Nostalgia makes its appearance in translation- most often a bad one- after a complicated journey not unlike the children's game 'telephone'. The phrase the first player whispers into the ear next to him passes through a whole chain of ears until it emerges from the mouth of the last player like a rabbit from a hat."