It started around age 35 and just gets stronger as the years go by

[Chemtrailsoverthecountryclub]

Nostalgia and thinking of the past-childhood, teens, twenties…

Mid 40’s now and have always been a bit nostalgic, but it didn’t really kick in hugely until mid thirties. I noticed a lot of people from school reconnecting, thoughts of old loves, teenage years.

Now at 47, it’s stronger than ever. My life is nice, nothing missing, but I think a lot about childhood, my teens, where I used to live, all my family when living at home and it just gives me such a pang of sadness…I know i’ll look back on these times of Dc being young in the same way.

Does anyone else have this? Instagram seems to be full of it. I wonder why we as humans are like this.

It’s such a cliche but life really does fly by so quickly

Oh god, yes… I went for a “walk” on google street view around my old house and neighbourhood where I grew up yesterday. Such a nice place and mostly happy days. The freedom I had as a child in the 70s was amazing!

I'd love to have had a happy childhood to look back on. I don't mean to be patronising but you are one of the lucky ones.

I do reminisce about my university days as that was when i felt free and happy. I think it increases with age.

I feel the same, and I’ve noticed the same on social media so I imagine it’s very common.

My family is now very small - lots of deaths, few branches of the family moved to Australia / NZ and we are unlikely to see them again, lots of family fall outs and branches of the family we don’t speak to anymore.

It’s therefore incredibly painful looking back on those days before it was all so complicated and fractured.

Bittersweet, but definite bitter than sweet in my case.

I think, ultimately, life is short, and nobody believes that when they are young. By the time they believe it, it’s too late to go back and enjoy / appreciate what they had.

The world is also just moving so fast - tech now is just so different to how it was when I was growing up in the 90s, that the past just seems so alien to us now sometimes….but he also yearn for that “simpler time”.

I quite often think about my kids lives and wonder “will they look back on these days as the halcyon days? Will they be nostalgic for this?”

They have lovely lives. But it’s different to my childhood. We have no family around us, it’s just us and my husband. And I feel a lot of guilt about that quite often.

I think as well it’s a yearning for our youth. I’m early 40s and a lot of my friends have got separated / divorced in past few years. Not one of them has gone out and found a “new man”. They have all reconnected with men from their past, ex boyfriends or whatever.

i can understand that. To a new guy, they are just a 40 year old woman. But to the guys from the past, they see the 18 year old my friends used to be.

I don’t know. It’s human nature, I suppose.

Hold on to those days with young children - those are the ones I’d give anything to do again despite also loving life with my brilliant teens.

Yes I almost know that whilst in the moment and that also makes me sad as my 7 year old is growing so fast

It wasn’t all great at all (family wise at least) but just being young with the world at your feet, all
your friends, the laughs etc

One day you’ll also look back on now with the same nostalgia. Every day is ‘tomorrows’ nostalgia. Weird thought.

Yes, particularly about the late 90s which just seemed more hopeful times.

It's a funny/odd one OP. My DS is doing his exams right now. I keep telling him 'your school years are some of the best of your life'. He can't see it right now, lol. But for me, looking back, they really were. The last carefree days of my life.
In comparison, he'd love to have lived when I grew up. I was born late 60's so had great music/disco's/parties. Everything was 'new' and just invented. It really was a great era to grow up in.

Not sure if this is related but I keep coming across online - Ever wondered what the stars from XYZ tv show look like now? Then there is a then and now photo comparison with date of birth and other trivia. I feel a little sadness because if the celebs are 10, 20, 30... years older guess what? We are too! Maybe there is a mass nostalgia campaign being dipped into the atmosphere. 🤔

I'm too tired to write this out so AI did it, but I wonder if this is of interest to anyone. Did the Voctorians not consider nostalgia to be a mental illness?

"Mark Fisher, a cultural theorist, coined the phrase "the slow cancellation of the future" to describe the gradual erosion of hope for a better future politically, economically, and socially. This cancellation is accompanied by a deflation of expectations, where there is a pervasive sense of living after the "gold rush" of cultural innovation and progress, leading to a reliance on nostalgia and pastiche in culture and arts.

Fisher argued that this phenomenon is not due to a lack of significant events or changes, but rather the inability to imagine or articulate alternatives to the present neoliberal reality. The period marked by the election of Margaret Thatcher and the subsequent neoliberal restructuring of the capitalist economy has contributed to this sense of stagnation.

Nostalgia plays a crucial role in this context, as it provides a way to cope with the failure of modernism to deliver the anticipated future. However, Fisher warned against falling into a vegetative state of endless culture recycling, as it castrates the potential to imagine ways out of the current neoliberal trap.

Resistance to this trend involves daring to dream and conceive of different futures, which Fisher believed is central to human nature. The cancellation of the future is a product of significant political, economic, and social changes, and resisting it requires imagining and building alternative futures.

The concept of hauntology, which Fisher drew from Jacques Derrida's original idea, describes the lingering influence of past ideas and their transformation into mere echoes or clichés, further contributing to the sense of living in a time where the future is cancelled.

In summary, Mark Fisher's concept of "the slow cancellation of the future" highlights the cultural and societal challenges in imagining and creating a better future, emphasizing the need to resist nostalgia and envision alternatives."

I'm 45 and have virtually no contact with people from school or uni days so I don't feel it as much. I don't look back on those daya as particularly happy or simple either! But I had a rather complex and non mainstream teens/20s.

I agree with really embracing the times with young dcs. I have an adult dc and also primary aged dcs so I know how quickly their childhood passes and how easy it is to get too busy to just enjoy the time.

The idea of reconnecting with exes or even old friends makes me shudder however! Exes are exes for a reason (I have no contact with any of mine).

Yep 100% all I think about is the 90s and early 2000s, the summers I spent with my cousins, the caravan we used to have, the schools I went to etc etc

It's a time when you were (hopefully) safe and secure and looked after. Life was for living and endless possibilities. You don't realise until you grow up and are responsible for your own children's lives, jobs, bills, mortgages quite how free you were. Especially if you put bereavement and family alienation into the mix. It's understandable to look back with nostalgia at easier times.

Yes, same with me too. I am also 47. I think it is a sort take stock of your life at the midlife stage. I keep on thinking about revisiting my childhood home where I spent from 4 to 11. Visiting my old school. Old streets, shops. Wondering how my life would have turned out had we not moved. Songs from the 80s often take me back there.

Life was so much simpler and carefree growing up then, wasn't it? I really wish I could go back there (and 're-do' some decisions along the way), sort of a do over. I would genuinely hate to be a child in this day and age.

Difficult time-hormones, we're usually mad busy at this stage with working, having to care for young kids and our parents, life's difficult with all that's going on in the world (yes, I know we're lucky compared to people in the past, but we have the internet so are constantly reminded about all the problems, everything is rushed, we often spend more time online than with real friends). Things just seem to be more bleak and less "happy endings" than in the past-I mean books, films and even music. On the bright side, some articles say we get happier again at 60...

It's fine to think about it. Would writing about it help? Sometimes this happens, dwelling on the past, when we are unhappy or afraid to move forward? There are a lot of big and scary things happening in the world, but kindly, there were also in the 1980s and 1990s. We just weren't as aware of them when we were younger.

Oh my goodness, I could've written this post myself. I've been feeling this SO badly recently, to the point my heart aches to be living back where I lived in the mid-late 90's. I think of it every single day. I'm going there for a holiday later this year, but I want to be there right now, and live there again.

I’ve been feeling exactly this too. Thank you for putting it into words.

I feel like I enjoyed the 1990s but definitely do not want to do it again or go back. It would annoy me so much now, and I'm so much more confident in who I am now.

I voted YABU for the clickbait title

Agree - it is nice to remember special times.

Yes. Yes. Yes.