Nostalgia

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Nostalgia. It's the time of year for it, let's face it. From its ancient Greek linguistic roots to Charles Dickens weaponising of it in 'A Christmas Carol', it's Christmas! Except this year it will be perhaps a more profound emotion than is usual. Nostalgia - the ache for times past, probably more fondly remembered than experienced, is this year made real by Covid. Like a World War, there is no escape from it, until it is over. A world in suspension from itself.

We will be remembering those past times, absent friends and childhood memories more acutely and earnestly than many of us can have ever experienced. The reality of our current, globally-shared lot, is one of collective loss; collective bereavement and ultimately, of collective hope for the future, post-pandemic. Let's not squander this lesson: possibly the biggest and most profound lesson we have ever had to learn: a lesson that has to be heeded, internalised and kept close; as we face the still-mounting obstacles we ourselves have created.

If we come out of the other side of this changed for the good, then maybe; just maybe, we can get this small blue home of ours back on track and its peoples treating themselves as equals. Nostalgia, after all comes from the Greek 'Nostos' meaning 'homecoming' and 'Algos', meaning 'pain'. Like 'Hiraeth' in Welsh, it is a deep melancholia of separation from roots, family and home. Culturally, nostalgia looks forward, rather than back; to otherwise mythical times we would rather live than simply remember. Like Orwell's The Moon Under Water: looking forward to a future in a past that never existed, denying the present its sting.

Image - © Popular Mechanics 

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