Nostalgia is part of building a narrative to process what's happened in your life.
The feeling is something that takes shape in retrospect - feeling the general feeling of a period you’re living in is like tasting the roof of your mouth: you usually don’t, because you're acclimated to it. Thus every period of life has a related period of first nostalgia, the first time we begin to notice that period's unique feeling.
Having become aware of this dynamic, I started to realize at some point that I could, in fact, feel the nostalgia of a period I was still living in.
Taken verbatim (with some rearrangement) from Nostalgia for the present by gome. It is rare to come across new thoughts in the echo chambers we float in, so I also wrote them a thank you email (though I don't know if it’ll reach them).
In the same post, they also write of nostalgia as seeds of flowers unbloomed...
The moods of different periods seem to return in different cycles. Perhaps I’m missing them because there's a seed that was planted in me back then that has yet to bloom.
I enjoyed reading their journal entries on a quiet Sunday. Here are three more snippets.