Nostalgia Is Feeling The Absence Of One Side Of You
The feeling of nostalgia is so common that sometimes we have the unconscious idea that it is there as something inherent to who we are. And that’s why everyone can identify with her: we live with nostalgia leaning on our backs, we walk with her, we dance with her and caress her even more when it rains. It’s as if on sad days she wants to be seen more.
We feel nostalgia for someone, for something, for a past that is no longer present and that we wanted it to be. We also feel nostalgia for a gift that is not and was not. We are nostalgic for moments, details, caresses, words… Definitely, nostalgia is as real as we can be ourselves and that’s why it moves so deeply.
Sometimes we are invaded by nostalgic thoughts
A few days ago I read an article in which the author said that our past is like a strange country from which we have been exiled, and then, like one that has already suffered from exile and is cold, sometimes we want to go back to seeking warmth. In this sense, the figurative exile can be very distant, or almost simultaneous to its present.
I believe all this to be true: as long as nostalgia does not reach prolonged melancholy, wanting to return from time to time is one more way of knowing what we are based on what we were. I don’t mean that we don’t want to live in the present, or that we feel bad, but that in this way we recognize ourselves and are aware of what we live.
People are nostalgic, as the Portuguese writer said, because missing something small makes it huge. Because that little thing is absence and you need it with all your being. That is why we are nostalgic: because, like love, we cannot feel nostalgia in a superficial way, it accompanies us in all our actions.
The two sides of nostalgia
When we hear the word nostalgia we immediately think that it is surrounded by something sad and sweet at the same time.
Missing your family, your friends or your partner, for example, is feeling momentarily unprotected, but it is also a hug when this lack is knowing who is with us and who we really want with us.
It is true that we tend to get the face of melancholy. However, it is brave to understand that nostalgia is the absence of something that was or is worth it, that was or is beautiful, that made or makes us happy.
And I speak of courage because if it is a permanent absence, it is difficult to understand the need to see nostalgia as the price of the most beautiful things. Nothing will ever make us feel nostalgic if it does not take with it the certainty of real, probable or coexisting happiness.
And, because of all this, we must have the face of nostalgia that completes us, that makes us participants in the world and that makes us see that we are truly living, despite its consequences…
