What Is NOSTALGIA?

November 06-2007:

What Is Nostalgia?

Definition: Longing for something past:

Today, I was listening to the radio station wbai.org, a program titled 'Talk Back.' And the discussion was on the feeling of NOSTALGIA that so many of us experience differently. But is so very familiar to many of us, at various times in our lives.

The host of this program's name was Ormando, and he dealt with this subject quite intelligently, sensitively, and humanely. He even cited some of the original thinkers and coiners of this idea or theory. But by and large, he stated that to be nostalgic, is basically to recall some experience or experiences, personal in nature, that we may have enjoyed or loved at some point in our life. Be it childhood, adolescence, or early years in our home or homeland.

Some callers phoned in to give some of their personal experiences with nostalgic longings in some of the areas above mentioned. Some identified certain types of music that is able to catapult them mentally, into some past time or event that they enjoyed or lived. Some cited the sixties and seventies discotheques, and attitudes that those young people seemed to have generally lived and portrayed. The freedom of expression, sexual experimentation, and political advocacy that was all part of the socio-political climate globally at that time. That so many of us who were young or younger at that time, felt a part of.

This brings to mind my own feelings of nostalgia sometimes, since I am also from another culture and homeland. Sometimes I feel a longing for some of those feelings, smells, attitudes, intimacy, and collective camaraderie that I felt during the sixties and seventies in Guyana, my homeland. And coming to the USA when I was already at the age of 39 years, fully matured, mentally and psychologically fixed in most of my ways and feelings of who and what I am, and what I expect from life. This new cultural experience can sometimes be very aggravating, impersonal, un-friendly, and egocentric for my accustomed view or life and human relationships.

Finding true friendships in this new culture, has not happened for me. Finding True Love has not happened either. And being able to have discussions on world or global affairs with some objectivity, coherence, and meaningfully in this culture, could be a tiresome and un-stimulating experience for me.

So nostalgia in the sense of feeling disconnected from, belonging to, or being able to establish true or genuine friendships, have not materialized thus far, in this adopted culture.


Derryck.
NYC.