1. A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.
2. The condition of being homesick; homesickness.
I am a "fence sitter" when it comes to nostalgia. I feel it can be both positive and negative. Living in "nostalgia", as a way of life, seems detrimental - never moving forward to see what the future may hold. I know people who lived, and died, in a state of nostalgia. I often wonder what happened in their early years to hold them as if they were captive to "the years gone by". I also know people who refuse to "go back" or think of their personal "painful" past. It seems to me that both are a result of personal injustices - thosthe nostalgia that either keeps them in that "warm 'n fuzzy" spot that protects them from any other hurt, or those who are continually looking for that "something" to enhance their lives, or protect them from that "painful place".
One of my personal quotes is "Live life looking out the front windshield, not out the rear view mirror!" Having said that, I like to think of nostalgia as that place to go when I want to reflect upon the past, temporarily, with a myriad of emotions - it's a way to forgive, pray to be forgiven - seems it's an integral building block for my future. Bottom line is we can't change the past, we can't alter bad decisions or change our actions of the past ... it's unfortunate that most people (even though THEY THINK THEY can) do not feel people can change. Another of my personal quotes is, "It's too bad we can't start life with the wisdom we gain, as we age." Again, having said that, "I have lived on this earthly plane long enough to know that part of why we are here is to learn to overcome adversity, adversity builds character, and this is the character I have become!" The hard knocks are supposed to help, but then, some never learn! Simply, I try to learn something new each day, strive to be a better person, no matter what I attempt to do - and ... live by the "Golden Rule".
"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life." ~W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity. ~Robert Morgan
It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave. ~Anatole Broyard
Nostalgia is a seductive liar. ~George Ball
“I had been there before; I knew all about it.” ~Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited