Homecoming in Memory: Nostalgia as Part of Modernity

Word «nostalgia» comes from Greek: nostos <TAG1> homecoming, and algos <TAG1> pain. At first, it described the sadness of one's native land among travelers or soldiers. Today we use it more widely — as a warm and at the same time a little sad memory of the past.

Everyone has moments when an old song makes its way to ants from childhood, carries the smell of mom's perfume back decades, an old photo causes a wave of warmth. This is a nostalgia — feeling that hurts and heals at the same time.

But why do we like to remember the past so much? Why do you sometimes want to go back «there», even if everything is fine in the present? Let's figure it out.

From a psychological point of view, nostalgia has an important function. When we remember happy moments, the brain activates areas associated with the reward system and releases the so-called «hormones of happiness» — dopamine and serotonin. That is why memories can lift the mood and even reduce the level of stress. In addition, in periods of instability and crises, people especially often turn to the past, because it seems clear and safe. Memories help to realize who we were and who we became.

Today, nostalgia is clearly manifested in fashion, where the styles of the 90s and even the early 2000s are revived, in music, where old hits return in the form of remixes or become popular a second time thanks to social networks, in cinema, where Hollywood actively creates remakes of iconic films to evoke a familiar emotional feeling in the audience. The social networks themselves fuel nostalgia by regularly offering us memories from several years ago. Brands are also eager to use this tool: they bring back retro packaging designs, release «classic» collections or products related to children's memories of the target audience. All of this works, because we buy not only a thing or a service, but also an emotion that reminds us of times when things were simpler and safer.

The impact of nostalgia goes far beyond marketing. It is actively present in art, because artists often turn to the past as a universal code that is understandable to everyone. It has therapeutic value, because numerous studies prove that people who sometimes allow themselves to immerse themselves in the past more easily overcome feelings of loneliness and have a lower risk of depressive states.

In peaceful life, nostalgia is associated with warm little things, and in wartime this feeling becomes much deeper and more tragic.

For many Ukrainians, the word «dim» today sounds like something ghostly. Some are forced to leave it to escape the explosions, others have lost — forever in flames or under debris. And then nostalgia becomes not just a memory of carefree childhood or youth, but a pain behind what is destroyed. It's longing for a lost home, for a city that's been bombed, for a backyard where the laughter of the children can no longer be heard. This is pain for native places, to which it is impossible to return, because they are either destroyed or occupied. A person keeps in his mind the smell of his home, the location of the streets, the familiar faces of the neighbors — all that suddenly became unattainable.

A person wakes up in someone else's room, on someone else's street, and catches himself on the fact that everything around seems temporary, like a decoration, and real life is left where there is no longer security.

Nostalgia in military realities is felt differently: it mixes tenderness and loss, warmth and sharp pain. It looks like a photo on the phone screen that you want to watch again and again, at least mentally to return to your usual life. It can be a habit of saying «at home» even if the home is destroyed. It's tears in the eyes from an old song that used to sound just the background and now reminds of the pre-war time when everything was «normal».