Nostalgia is a homesickness and also means: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.
Last night while we were watching a television show, the profiler (someone who analyzes people’s behavior) caught the bad guy because he was not exhibiting restorative nostalgia.
It was some kind of Aretha Franklin re, re, re moment for me.
Homesickness is an again of longing for home. Nostalgia, an again of wanting to return to the past. But, restorative nostalgia is an actual desire to recreate the past. This longing is usually negative in nature.
I found the juxtaposition of the positive attributes of the word restorative — which really doesn’t have positive or a negative attributes — and the actual negative meaning of the term, restorative nostalgia, interesting.
Restorative nostalgia makes people want to rebuild and relive the past. In other words, live the past. It becomes negative because we remember the past out of context and erroneously recreate it. It leads to discontent as we cannot accurately recreate the past. We’re stuck here in the present.
This gives me pause. It’s a type of rumination — and rumination is a cautionary tale. More tomorrow. ❤
TotallyKris 