Have you ever experienced nostalgia? It is that strange euphoric feeling when your thoughts wander back in time and long forgotten memories come flooding back. Nostalgia is said to be triggered by some event or symbol which has an association with the past.
In my case, the trigger was a song which was released years ago when I was in my teens. I don't travel a lot, but when I do, I prefer the train. But there are places which are not connected by train and so I have to take a bus. The bus operators in my place have some pretty weird notions. They are convinced that all their passengers prefer some sort of entertainment while travelling and this they provide by way of movies. It never occurs to them that people also prefer to travel quietly, without disturbance. So you are stuck in a moving bus with some crummy movie which most of the passengers do not watch anyway. I digress. I was thus stuck and firmly too, and was just about at the limits of my endurance when the movie ended. Mercifully, it was not followed by another sappy movie, but by music. And the first song that came on immediately lifted my spirits. This was a song which I had enjoyed during my school days. As I listened to it after many years, my mind travelled back in time and relived some of my memorable moments of those days: The day I was one of the few students of my school who received an award from an organization for proficiency in English, the day I played hooky just to escape a boring lecture (on something which was not connected to studies), of window shopping in the nearby commercial area , visiting the newly opened video games parlour near the school etc. Suddenly, the old movies, songs , pictures and even merchandise of the bygone era are starting to look attractive, more than even the contemporary ones. Strangely, all the undesirable incidents in the past do not dampen my enthusiasm when I think of the "good old days of yore".
From a practical viewpoint, while nostalgia can be a sort of harmless day dreaming, it would be wrong to argue that things were much better in the past than they are now. True, we had lesser crowd and pollution in those days, but that is all. Today, information technology has grown by leaps and bounds along with advances in the fields of medicine, engineering, communication etc. Things which were deemed impossible years ago, are realities now and we must be thankful for them. True, these advances have also brought along some undesirable spin-offs, but that is only to be expected. Indulging in nostalgia is all very well but practically speaking, we are better off now than ever before.
Interestingly, nostalgia was at one time considered to be a disease and treated by doctors. During the endless wars in Europe in the turbulent 17th and 18th Century, soldiers serving outside their countries felt homesick and dispirited and this was usually cured by sending them home for a short time. Here's the whole article, if you are interested.
Never experienced nostalgia before? Don't worry, it's just a matter of time.
1 comments:
Hope..Nostalgia is experienced by everyone who cherish their childhood memories..
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