Nostalgia: Amy Doran

Once I told my pastor that I was feeling nostalgic and he said, “You? Feeling and remembering things? No way.”

Similarly, once I was talking about my writing with one of my favorite professors and I said “I tend to get really hung up on specific feelings and trying to explicate them… like nostalgia, or an inexplicable sense of meaningfulness.” He responded, “We’ve met.”

So, I have a reputation for being what some would call “sentimental” and most people would probably call “emotional.”

It’s funny, though. As I’ve gotten older my emotions have changed, and my sense of looking back has changed too.

Last weekend I saw some people from high school I don’t get to see very often any longer—some of whom I hadn’t seen in 7 or 8 or 9 years.

In high school, senior year, I was in yearbook class. I was in lots of other classes too—and with lots of the same people that were in yearbook. We were in AP classes and had to write essays and study chemistry and calculus and history and government. We were also applying to colleges, worrying about our SAT scores, and hoping that we would make it once we were out of the community we were in. Yearbook was a different environment—we had things to do, but it was all about telling the story of our last year of high school, and we could goof around and walk around the school and maybe sneak off campus to make a Starbucks run.

Somehow in that class, I became friends with some of the most intelligent and remarkable people I’d met before or since. We all scattered after we graduated, but I remember hanging out with them and all of us feeling how important that time was. It was borrowed time.

Seeing them again made me remember that time, and it made me realize how it wasn’t just the fear of the future that made that time feel special with them senior year. They really are special people, and we really have a genuine fondness and affection for each other—one that somehow hasn’t faded away.

Nostalgia is all about time, I think. Time and meaning put together. Our lives are meaningful, and I think that God finds ways to speak to us about that. Sometimes the way that happens is through nostalgia. I think it’s a reminder, too, that “right now” isn’t all there is.

Nostalgia can be bittersweet, but I think when accepted with the right heart, it can fill you up. Your life and your story and the depths of what goes on in your heart are a special gift only for you from God—and sometimes that can be overwhelming. But, I think it should be.