Nostalgia
nos·tal·gia
/näˈstaljə,nəˈstaljə/
noun
a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Nostalgia by definition is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Everybody feels them and it hits you like a Mack Truck out of nowhere. It’s the feeling like you want to go back to a time for a brief escape from today. Anybody who’s had a positive college experience will feel this at least 45 times a day.
This is Trabant Student Center at UD. Kinda mostly used for Chick-Fil-A, but the lights are iconic imo.
Lately I’ve been ramping up my efforts in trying to grow up. Trying to let go of the past and not get upset whenever I start longing for it. I found that it wasn’t productive at all and makes me resent my current situation and where I stand in my life. I stumbled upon a video on YouTube about the power of nostalgic music and it’s inspired me to write about nostalgia and how I can use its presence in a productive way. Nostalgia comes in many forms, but in my personal experience, music seems to make the most sense and brings out memories that I don’t even realize I’ve been keeping all these years.
Unless you’re some grumpy old troll who hates happiness, chances are music has given you joy in your life. You have your favorite artists who drop singles, albums, etc. that get you hyped up in a given time. Music is an incredibly powerful tool that activates emotions in people. The end of my senior year had me putting on Landslide by Fleetwood Mac and Stop this Train by John Mayer on repeat. Sometimes I would blast it with headphones on and just lay in my room and participate in sad boy hours. Other times I would play it in front of my roommates and make them feel emotions about entering their final year in college as well. The next time they hear Sweet Child O’ Mine, they’ll remember the bar crawl pregame we had early in the morning. Was it rude to extract that emotion out of them when they didn’t necessarily want it? Yeah, probably, but as my Communication professor in my freshman year of college says, you have to just let people feel whatever they feel at the moment. Sure, it was a bit selfish of me to share my nostalgia and melancholy emotions to my roommates, but I couldn’t do it by myself. I would’ve burst into flames if I kept it all in. Shout out to Matt, Aaron, and Dan for being excellent roommates for that.
Nostalgia isn’t just about feeling sad about a time you want back. I was shuffling my playlists the other day while working for my corporate overlords and all of a sudden Low Life by Future and The Weeknd starts bumping. It allowed me to take a step back from my spreadsheets and status reports and reminded me of a time walking to class on a cold winter day. It provided me with an escape from mundane struggles of work for a good 5 minutes and 13 seconds. I wouldn’t really know what my college experience would be like if Kanye West didn’t drop The Life of Pablo in 2016. I don’t know what everybody thought about the album, but it was a masterpiece in my book. Kanye would add songs to the album unannounced and explains on Twitter that it’s a living artwork. I ate that shit up as a sophomore and I still do today. Even songs that I was indifferent about started sounding good to me. While I acknowledge Migos’ smash album Culture was a bonafide hit, I could play that album today and think of dorm parties at the Towers and Courtyards. I can still visualize the LED lights turned up late at night playing 2K blasting Kelly Price way too loud. Lil Uzi Vert’s verse in Bad and Boujee is a mandatory stop in my workday just so I can appreciate it all over again. Lastly, I’ll never forget Miami 82 remixed by Kygo and the drinking game that went with it, created by some of my best friends. It was a gateway to a world of carefree living in college much like the tone of the song presents.
So why would thinking back on the good days be productive today? Why should we take time out of our busy work days to live through something that happened 4-5 years ago? In today’s climate, shit is wildly depressing. Why would I spend 8, 9, 10 hours of my day being miserable at work, eating dinner, hopping on some video games, then going to bed just to do it all over again in the morning? Nostalgia gives us a benchmark and guidelines as to what life was like when you were young, wild, and free (reached way too far back for that reference, my bad). It allows us to think back to the simpler times and motivates us to create new memories in the future that we will one day feel nostalgic about. Cordae’s The Lost Boy and Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go took over my playlists during first official experience in corporate America post-undergrad. Listening to Big Bootie mixes and radio hits today will fill our memories for when we go back to dive bars in Hoboken. Life goes on after college, but I believe that it’s extremely important to think back on those days with caution that you don’t get stuck. A brief escape to stressful moments provides a huge boost to your day when it’s done right. So, do what you have to do to think back on simpler times and better days when life bogs you down. The stress will subside, and more better days will come. Just be ready to attach it to a song you can later revisit.
Lorenzo Riego
Lorenzo Riego is an account executive at a healthcare-centric advertising agency in midtown Manhattan. He graduated from the University of Delaware in 2019 with a degree in Media Communications.