More often now, my mind goes back to memories from decades ago. As I get older, I find myself daydreaming about the 80s and 90s when I was a kid. A time of CDs, video games, Saturday morning cartoons, and youth-defining songs. When I hear a familiar melody from 1999 (oh, what a year that was!), it makes my heart ache a little. But the farther away I get from those years, the more they seem to pull me back in. In the past, I only thought about the future. Nowadays, I often find comfort in memories of the past.
The pull of the past
I’ve noticed this not just in myself but also in the people around me. Friends my age wax poetic about ‘the good old days’ with increasing frequency. Some of my peers on social media share nostalgic throwback posts more than updates about the present.
It comes with a harsh realization: my generation is not young anymore.
It feels as if the present has stiff competition. Why deal with the unknowns of today when we can go back to a time when everything was so certain? It seems like every year that goes by adds a deeper rose-gold tint to our memories.
I’ve caught myself saying things like, “Life was simpler back then,” even when I know that’s not entirely true. When we were kids, life seemed simpler. Because we only remember certain things, the world of our youth seems nicer. When a friend sighs that nothing today can compare to the music of the 80s and 90s, from a nostalgic point of view I agree with part of what they say, but I also wonder what we might be missing in the music of the 2020s since we’re so focused on the past.
Making the past seem better than it was
Nostalgia has a way of editing out the inconvenient details. We remember the best parts: the hit songs, the movies we loved, and how close-knit our neighbourhood felt. The struggles and mundanities of those times often fade from view. Were we happier before the internet? There was something magical about a pre-digital childhood, when news came from the morning paper and friendships meant face-to-face time at the mall. But I also recall plenty of frustrations from those days. Waiting hours by a landline for an important call or getting lost on road trips because we had only a dated map. And don’t forget, back then we had access to far fewer ideas and voices than we do now. Nostalgia creates a distorted view of the past by helping us remember only the good and downplay the bad. The result is a kind of pleasant mirage: it feels kinda nice, but it’s kinda fake.
I’ve started to notice how often ‘the good old days’ are invoked at the expense of the present. When we constantly compare today to an idealized yesterday, today inevitably loses. I remember when a colleague lamented how “kids these days don’t play outside like we did.” While it’s true that childhood has changed (indoor entertainment and digital devices have a bigger slice of their attention), our generation had its own issues. We played outside, yes, but we also grew up with secondhand smoke in family cars and far less awareness of mental health.
Every era has its pros and cons; our nostalgia just fails to remember them in balanced measure. Psychologists call this nostalgia bias. It is the mind’s habit of favouring past experiences and idealizing them, editing out the struggles and flaws. So when we pine for the past, we might be chasing something that never fully existed in the way memory portrays it.
The comfort and the trap
Nostalgia is undeniably comforting. In uncertain times, wrapping ourselves in familiar memories feels safe, like a soft blanket that still carries the scent of home. They remind us of who we were, perhaps when we felt more carefree or invincible, and of who we loved and who loved us.
But nostalgia can also be a trap. The comfort it offers is seductive but selective. It’s like looking at an old photograph that hides as much as it shows. The trap springs when we start preferring the photograph to the real, living moment. By focusing only on the pleasant scenes, we end up reinforcing the idea that we’ve lost something precious and irreplaceable. We may even begin longing for environments that were flawed or even toxic, simply because those old identities felt more certain than what we face now. We might yearn for a past that wasn’t actually as perfect as we recall, just because it’s familiar. I sometimes catch myself longing for high school days. Me, of all people! How easily my mind glossed over my teenage angst and loneliness, recalling instead a haze of school spirit and innocent crushes.
The trap of nostalgia lies in its half-truths. It presents a version of the past that did exist, but not in the pure form we like to imagine. Yes, I had joyful times in my youth, but I also struggled, as everyone does. I fell off my bike and got a concussion. Worried about fitting in at school. Felt the sting of family problems. Nostalgia gently erases those shadows. It tells me only about the music, the sunlit summers, and the laughter. And if I’m not careful, I’ll start believing that life was only good back then and that everything since has been a slow decline. That’s the emotional trap: a subtle, creeping pessimism about the present, born from an illusion that the past was perfect.
I have seen how this outlook can sour one’s attitude, leading to bitterness or a sense of dislocation. When someone becomes convinced their best days are behind them, it can breed resentment towards the present. In extreme cases, idealizing the past can make people susceptible to regressive ideologies, whether it’s a personal refusal to adapt to new realities or a political yearning for a bygone era that must be “made great again.”
The grip of memory on relationships
Nostalgia doesn’t just colour how we see our past eras; it affects how we see each other. Within families and long-term friendships, I’ve felt how strongly people cling to earlier versions of one another.
Someone once told me a piercing truth: “People remember the version of you they had the most control of”.
It struck a chord deep in me. In our relationships, especially older-to-younger family ties, nostalgic memory can become a subtle form of control or at least resistance to change. My mother, for example, often speaks about my childhood self as if it’s a living, present entity: “You were always such a busybody,” “You used to love to come home.” These comments are usually loving, a way for her to reconnect with the person I once was. But there’s an undercurrent that suggests the present me is somehow a departure from that cherished memory. I sense, at times, a gentle tug for me to remain that person. It was the one they understood and could guide, rather than the adult with my unyielding opinions and newfound boundaries.
It’s not just my mother. My extended family, many stuck in a culture that glorifies the past (tempo doeloe, anyone?), still calls me by old nicknames long after I’ve outgrown them. An old friend from high school insists on bringing up the same handful of goofy stories every time we catch up, as if our relationship cannot evolve beyond those highlights from years ago. I recognize it because I do it too: in my mind, he’s still a chaotic prankster, though he’s a very serious father nowadays! People remember you as you were; they remember the version of you that fit neatly into a role or story they understood. When I assert a new boundary or reveal how I’ve changed, not everyone knows what to do with it. In their eyes, I’ve ‘changed,’ and that can be said with a hint of disappointment or betrayal. It’s as if by evolving, I’m breaking an unspoken pact that I would always be the person they remember.
This dynamic is also fueled by nostalgia. Our loved ones often long for the family of the past. When the kids were all under one roof, when roles were clear. For them, seeing me as the grown, independent person I am now might highlight the passage of time in a way that hurts. It’s more comforting to interact with the memory of me that lives in, say, 1997, when I was dependent, much more pliant, and firmly within their circle and influence.
Sometimes I cannot help but think: one may care, cry, and long for the young ‘Basje‘ I was but completely ignore the grown man I have become.
I try to be gentle with this, to understand it’s not ill-intentioned. We all do this to some extent: freeze each other in amber at the age we felt we knew someone completely. But it does become a trap if it turns into resistance against someone’s growth. I’ve had to learn to gently but firmly say, I’m not that teenager anymore. And I’ve had to accept that some relationships may never fully embrace the present me. I don’t owe anyone the version of me that they remember. I am not required to stay the same to keep other people comfortable. It’s a wisdom I try to carry with me when guilt creeps in for outgrowing an old expectation.
It’s bittersweet. Like David Bowie sang in his 1972 hit ‘Changes’, “Time may change me, but I can’t trace time”. Time changes us in ways we cannot fully track. We are always becoming, even when we are looking backward. Nostalgia comforts but also conceals that we are always living into a version of ourselves we may not yet recognize, all the while losing another version of ourselves.
With one foot in the past and another in the future
Reflecting on all this, I feel a strange mix of gratitude and caution. Gratitude for having a past rich enough to miss. I think it means I’ve lived fully, loved people, and felt moments that matter. This nostalgia that ensnares me, it comforts me. It’s proof that I have roots, that I come from somewhere. But I’m also cautious, aware of how easy it is to get stuck gazing backward. The trap of nostalgia is that it tricks you into thinking the best is behind you.
I refuse to accept that. Yes, I’ll continue to smile at 80s pop songs and tell my nephews fun stories about growing up without mobile phones and the internet. I’ll treasure the photo albums and maybe even keep a box of old CDs for posterity. But I will try not to live there. The past deserves appreciation, not canonization.
I think every generation navigates this balance between memory and momentum. I see now why older folks often slip into nostalgia. It’s comforting in a world that may feel like it’s moving on without you. But I also see the quiet cost of indulging in that too much: the risk of becoming disconnected from the present or overly critical of it. The present might lack the sepia-toned clarity of memories (life is always messier in real time), but it’s where we actually are. And it’s where future nostalgic moments are being formed, whether we recognize them or not.
Occasionally I wonder which aspects of now I’ll be nostalgic for in twenty years. That thought alone can be enough to snap me back to attention, to make me look around and appreciate the imperfect, beautiful moment I’m living in. Driving with my husband through the Douro valley. The cats on the sofa. The energetic retrospectives with my colleagues.
Nostalgia will always be a part of me. But I keep an eye on it. I let it visit, I listen to what it has to say, and then I gently show it out. I would rather not be trapped in yesterday’s rooms while today’s sun is shining outside. After all, the 1980s and 1990s were wonderful in many ways, but so is this 2025, despite the doomsaying, if I’m brave enough to truly live in it. The trick, I suspect, is to carry our yesterdays with us as cherished companions, not as masters.