The Grass Used to Be Greener, and We Were More Naïve: A Sober Guide to Nostalgia

It is a familiar scene: a soulful track from your youth comes on, you stare pensively into the middle distance, a wave of pleasant sorrow washes over your soul, and your brain delivers a stroke of pure genius: “Now that was living! Everything today is pure gloom and decay.”

Let’s turn on the lights and take off the rose-tinted glasses.

1. A Warm Pastry Does Not Prove the Greatness of an Era

The primary logical ditch we eagerly sprint into is this: if you were happy making out in an entryway to an acoustic guitar in 2007, that does not mean 2007 was the pinnacle of human civilization. The specific value of a moment belongs strictly to that moment; it does not demonstrate the superiority of an entire era. By that same token, a heartfelt family gathering offers zero guarantee that the second cousin sitting in the corner was not dying of boredom.

At the same time, leave the lazy armchair diagnosis of “you’re just romanticizing everything and missing a carefree childhood” to amateur psychoanalysts. “Being carefree” is hardly a universal template. A person can long, in an entirely grounded and specific way, for a particular friend, a vanished local park, an unhurried daily rhythm, or a missed fork in the road. A warm memory does not automatically become fake or idealized simply because it makes you feel good. It may well rest on solid facts—you just don’t need to inflate it into a universal golden age.

2. Feeling Joy and Sadness at the Same Time Is Normal, Not a System Bug

Many people somehow manage to suffer over the mere fact of their suffering: “If I had it so good, why do I feel so miserable right now? There must be something wrong with me.”

Relax. Warmth and sorrow coexist perfectly well inside the same skull. The warmth comes from the fact that something genuinely good happened in your life. The sorrow comes from the fact that it remains in the past and is unavailable right now.

And no, Augustine the theologian was not running double-blind, placebo-controlled trials in his Confessions when he observed that memory can recall joy with tears. That was a Christian philosophical reflection on the soul and God, not a laboratory finding of evidence-based medicine. Do not mistake a bishop’s existential anguish for clinical data.

3. Laboratory Magic and the Limits of Self-Reports

When science popularizers breathlessly recount the 2006 study by Wildschut and colleagues, do not rush to the pharmacy for a prescription-grade dose of nostalgia. The authors conducted seven studies examining the triggers, content, and emotional functions of this feeling. In the experiments, participants were instructed to recall either an ordinary event or a nostalgic one, after which their subsequent self-reports were measured. Differences did emerge on several survey scales: those who recalled the past rated their social connectedness, positive affect, and self-regard higher.

Neat? Sure. But let’s rein in the fanaticism. Checking a box that says “I feel closer to others” measures an ephemeral, subjective experience inside a test tube, not real-world behavior out in the wild. It does not prove by a single grain that outside the lab a difficult conversation took place, a shattered friendship was mended, or a years-long conflict dissolved. These results do not turn nostalgia into mandatory wellness calisthenics, and they certainly do not guarantee automatic benefits for every last person.

4. Odysseus Sailed for His Wife, Not a Museum of the Ideal Past

In Book 5 of the Odyssey, the King of Ithaca rejects eternal youth with the goddess Calypso and yearns for his rocky island and his mortal Penelope. A literary hero chose a specific bond and duty over a glossy fantasy. But Odysseus is a character in an epic poem, not an instruction manual from the Department of Health, and his example places no obligation on modern individuals to batter their way back home through storms at any cost.

If you do decide to visit the town of your youth, changes are entirely likely: familiar streets may be redrawn, and people will have drifted into their own separate orbits. That said, it hardly means you are guaranteed to find dilapidated streets, ailing peers, and inevitable disillusionment—the reunion might turn out to be genuinely lovely. The real point is something else: the physical town outside the car window is under no obligation to be a mirror image of the mental sanctuary preserved in your head. You can love the past without embarking on a compulsory pilgrimage to old fences.

5. You Can’t Squeeze the Toothpaste Back into the Tube

Some things are lost permanently: people who have passed away, an old family home that was sold, the effortless freedom of youth. Frantically scrambling to find an “exact replacement” is doomed to fail because a unique loss cannot be substituted.

That is no reason to throw ashes on your head, however. The value can be preserved in a different form: cooking a soup using your mother’s recipe, looking after your grandfather’s watch, or labeling old photo albums.

Or… you could do absolutely nothing. The world will not end if you simply listen to a song, sigh heavily, and go wash the skillet without turning your memory into a theatrical performance.

And for heaven’s sake, do not suffocate your children with your reminiscences. Shoving a faded snapshot into a teenager’s face while barking, “Now back in our day, this was real magic!” is demanding the impossible. They did not live there. They have every right to nod politely and bury their faces right back in their phones.

6. Do Not Text Your Ex at Three in the Morning

Nostalgia’s most treacherous trick is leaning in to whisper: “Remember how witty their jokes were?”

Sure, you remember. But nostalgia does not obligate you to go back to someone, and it certainly does not erase the reasons for caution. The fact that you had a wonderful beach trip five years ago does not cancel out the screaming matches, the mutual resentment, and the precise reasons you split up.

Acknowledging that a relationship had its high points is fine. Rushing out to step on the exact same rake just for a fleeting prick of warmth is entirely unnecessary. Protect your forehead.

7. What to Do with This (Minus Diagnoses and Promises of Zen)

When a wave of longing for the old days hits, there is zero need to slap a clinical label on yourself over the mere word “nostalgia.”

If you choose, try sorting through your thoughts quietly and without grandiosity:

Separate three distinct claims:
“This was genuinely precious to me” is an honest acknowledgment of your experience.
“Life as a whole was better back then” is a sweeping historical generalization that does not follow from the first premise (and demands far sturdier evidence than your fond feelings).
“I am obligated to recreate this right now” is a third, entirely separate judgment that the first two do not compel you toward in the slightest.
If you want to act, take a modest step:
Realized you miss heartfelt kitchen gatherings? Host a dinner this week. But do so strictly around the consent and desires of today’s guests, without expecting them to cosplay your college friends from thirty years ago.
Or simply leave it alone:
You can carefully label an old photograph, write down your grandmother’s recipe, or do nothing at all—listen to the track, sigh, and go drink your tea. You are under no obligation to turn every warm sentiment into a personal growth initiative.

If, however, endlessly comparing your present exhaustion to airbrushed highlight reels of the past persistently disrupts your life and work, that specific struggle and practical ways to manage it can certainly be discussed with a professional. Calmly, looking at the facts, and without slapping a pathology onto ordinary human longing.

The past does not need to be flawless to hold value for you. And the present does not need to bend over backward to defeat your memories in a beauty contest: the grass over here is a perfectly normal, standard shade of green.

Primary sources and research

Tim Wildschut, Constantine Sedikides, Jamie Arndt, Clay Routledge. Nostalgia: Content, Triggers, Functions, 2006. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 975–993. The abstract, introduction, Study 5 method, selected methods and results of Studies 6–7, and relevant General Discussion sections were read. Findings are used within measures and procedures; underlying data were not independently reanalysed.
Homer. The Odyssey, Samuel Butler prose translation. Project Gutenberg. Book V: the passage on staying with Calypso, wishing to return, and speaking to her was read; quotations belong to the reply in V.215–224. The English version calls the hero Ulysses; Russian uses Odysseus. The translator's introductory hypotheses about authorship are not adopted as established facts.
Augustine. The Confessions, Edward Bouverie Pusey translation. Project Gutenberg. Book X, especially X.14.21: the discussion of remembered feelings was read within the Christian search for God. Used for a limited comparison without another quotation from this text.

About the authors

Andrey Zarinsh is the author and founder of United Wisdom. He explores inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut is a coauthor of United Wisdom. Alongside her research, she seeks to test these ideas in practice and observe how principles of unity and mutual understanding work in real life between people and cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.