Nostalgia and Occasionally "Dwelling on the Past"

More Purposeful and Productive Than We Often Realize

There are people who tend to live in the past, and there are people who just love nostalgia. I, on the other hand, are a look-to-the-future kind of person. That's why last Winter, when I went through a few months of unsettling dwelling on the past, I was actually getting a little concerned about my own mental health. Most people understand that a little nostalgia may be fine, but too much is often seen as a sign of a problem.

Being a little more than half-way through my life, I'm not of an age where I should be entering any "second childhood". Neither am I of an age where thinking about details of my childhood should really be taking up too much of my thinking time. Still, last Winter I found myself with an uncharacteristic preoccupation with inconsequential details of my childhood. Equally unsettling, I found myself longing to go back to the city where I'd spent my childhood and see what was still the same. I should have gone, and maybe that longing would have ended. I didn't go, so it persisted for a good part of the Winter.

When you're a practical, look-to-the-future, kind of person finding yourself preoccupied with the details of a childhood that was decades ago can make you wonder what's going on. I actually considered that this could be the very beginnings of some sort of premature (very premature) mental deterioration; so not only was I preoccupied with the baffling preoccupation with the past, but also with the concerns that what was going on was not a harmless phase.

It turns out, though, that this wasn't just a pointless phase (or a sign of looming mental illness). It was - now that I've figured it out - a function of that very practical and sensible part of my personality from which I've always gained my sense of stability. I've also figured out that some of the apparent "dwelling on the past" and talking about the past that elderly people often do may, in fact, also be a far more practical and healthy thing than many younger people realize.