I ask myself why nostalgia is such a powerful and visceral emotion, why my mind is inexorably drawn to the early years of my life as to a haven of security and a space of precious beauty, even though it was also a time of darkness, hardship, and loss. Is it solely because in this emotion—in nostalgia, though the word perhaps is inadequate—I long for the “good old times” when things were simpler? I do not think that explains just how deep the ache goes, the tugging in the pit of the stomach and the tearing of the heart. No, of course it does not. After all, when I contemplate deeply this sense, I realize that I do not desire to return to my childhood or my youth, nor to the circumstances that then enfolded me. My heart desires something else entirely: something glimpsed during that time but existing beyond it. Something timeless and eternal.
But if nostalgia is a longing for timelessness, for a reality transcending time, why then does it spring from memory or awaken memory? I suppose it is because memory, as paradoxical as it may sound, is inseparable from longing. No desire exists without a seed from which to grow, and however mature the tree of longing becomes, it starts with a seed of remembrance, of experience, of a beauty glimpsed in time that reaches beyond time. All longing is thus born from remembrance, for it is stirred on toward the beauty that we do not yet know by the beauty that we have once known. The human heart cannot desire unless it first remembers, and memory gives birth to desire. This is true even if this memory be nothing but the memory-before-memory that is impressed as a seal upon my inmost being in my very coming to be in this world, in the Love that surpasses all memory and experience but stands at the origin of it all.
And remembrance of the past is always also simultaneously longing for the future. Nostalgia seeks to cast a bridge from the present to the past, but it does so not merely to re-live the past, but in order to open a way into the future, a future in which all the beauty that has touched and moved me in the past comes to live again, full and rich, and yet without any of the transience, imperfection, and loss that mark all beauty in this broken world.
Thus nostalgia, truly, is a longing for the timeless eternity, for the rediscovery of the wonder and freedom and peace, the simplicity and joy and playfulness of childhood, and yet wedded fully to the maturity, sobriety, and depth of adulthood. It yearns to draw all things together into unity where they have been fractured by time and by all the pains that occur within time; it yearns to discover in the seeds of beauty that have touched me, from any and every source, however small, the fullness of infinite Beauty. Yes, it yearns to plunge into this Beauty in a ceaseless delight and an expansive, playful freedom, in a warm, sheltering peace, and in an intimate presence and belonging that is not dimmed or lessened by anything, nor distracted or threatened, but abundant and overflowing forever without end.
