Editor’s note: This week's edition of "Hey Wait Just One Second" is written by a guest columnist.
As daylight hours become ever more scarce and a proper wintry chill has finally set in on campus, I find myself longing for summer sun and the impromptu trips to Mystic Lake that once characterized life in the blissful metropolis that is Medford/Somerville. According to researchers at the University of Southampton, this wave of nostalgia that has so suddenly subsumed me in fact has an evolutionary function: Nostalgia can make you feel physically warmer.
The unique phenomenon was first described as “nostalgia” in 1688. Swiss doctoral student Johannes Hofner coined the term in his dissertation, drawing on the ancient Greek “nostos,” meaning “return home” and “algos,” meaning “pain.” At the time, nostalgia was considered a curable disease. Opium, leeches and a trip to the Alps were all recommended treatments for Swiss mercenaries afflicted with nostalgia.
As a sensation, nostalgia is also quite politically potent. According to scholar Svetlana Boym, political revolutions are often followed by outbreaks of nostalgia. The fall of the Soviet Union, she argues, produced an image of its last decades as a “Golden Age of Soviet Stability, national strength, and ‘normalcy.’” Regardless of the truthfulness of this narrative, it is one which has been harnessed time and time again by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his political rhetoric, promising a return to his country’s status as a global great power.
In the present day, our perception of nostalgia has shifted from a cause for concern to a source of comfort, with studies demonstrating a positive correlation between instances of nostalgic feeling and high self esteem, perceived existential meaning, and richer interpersonal relationships. While nostalgia most frequently occurs during periods of loneliness, scientists have found that reflecting on past relationships and times of happiness through a nostalgic lens increases perceived social support, thus easing the feelings of loneliness which initially precipitated the reflection.
Still, while popular conceptions of nostalgia paint it as a warm and overwhelmingly positive sensation, I can’t help but feel a tinge of sorrow whenever this time of year rolls around. Unlike elation, misery or excitement, nostalgia blurs the lines between stereotypical value judgments of happiness and woe — it’s a sensation, more so than a feeling.
Across cultures, humans have tried to capture the at-times contradictory essence of nostalgia in language. Speaking on the German “sehnsucht,” British author C.S. Lewis translated the word as a devastating longingness “for which we know not what.” Similarly, the Portuguese “saudade” focuses on the melancholic tilt of nostalgic feeling, described by author Manuel de Melo as “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.” Both sehnsucht and saudade carry with them a sense of impossibility — a longing for a time or place that can never be replicated, much in the way that nostalgia yearns for a rose-colored past that has never existed and, in many cases, never will.
“Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance of one’s own fantasy,” wrote Boym. While we may find ourselves distraught, longing for what has been in these cold and dark November days, it is important to remind ourselves that one day, not so far down the road, it is these very moments that we’ll be fondly looking back on. Born out of present discontentment, nostalgia can be a curse. However, it carries with it a promise: a reminder that things have been better, and, perhaps in due time, they may be again.
