As I'm sitting here on my couch in my bedtime clothing, I'm feeling the sense of nostalgia. Every now and then, whether it be when I'm listening to songs that I used to play years ago, or when I drive past a restaurant or store I used to frequent, I feel that sentiment crawl back from wherever it hibernates in my mind. That feeling is unlike any other, and it is important because almost every person has felt it at some point in their life. It is a "predominantly positive, self-relevant, and social emotion serving key psychological functions", as stated in this study. This emotion is intriguing to me, and left me wondering as to why it exists in the first place. So, I did a little research of my own, and uncovered a few facts about this wonderful feeling of sentiment.

First and foremost, I found out that nostalgia has several functions. It has been known to improve mood, increase social connectedness, provide existential meaning, and promote psychological growth. However, like you may know, you do not always feel nostalgia when you are happy. It can make you feel happier, but it does not always stem from a positive state of mind. In fact, most episodes of nostalgic feeling occur when you are sad or lonely. Smells, tastes, certain things you may hear, these all can generate feelings of sentimentality. One type of nostalgia that I uncovered is music-evoked. In this article, I found out that music is a powerful source for nostalgia. Songs typically bring back memories that are more general rather than specific; say for example, the time you spent playing on a team while in high school. You may hear a song you used to play while you would head to practice, or while practice was going on, but you may not have specific memories linked to that song. The song may instead make you reminisce to the time you spent on the team, and how much fun it was to be on it and play your sport, but you may not connect that song with the memory of winning an important game, swimming a best time, or defeating a rival school.

I uncovered a rather intriguing concept about nostalgia; not only can it make you feel less lonely, but it can physically make you feel warmer. A study conducted in southern China (which was reported in this article) investigated what happened to make this warm feeling occur. Over the course of a month, it was found that feeling nostalgia was more common on cold days, and that people in a room kept at 68 degrees Fahrenheit were more likely to reminisce and have feelings of nostalgia than those that were in warmer rooms. It was thought after this study that this feeling of nostalgia and its effect on the body may have had an evolutionary advantage to our ancestors; this warm feeling could have contributed to their survival.

While in the moment of sentiment, one may feel lonely or sad. These feelings are not uncommon. Feeling lonely or sad, or both, can happen at major events in one's life, such as during the transition from high school to college, or leaving one's hometown for the promise of a new job. These feelings of sadness or loneliness can evoke feelings of nostalgia. When this occurs, thinking about "happier" or "better" times kick in, and can make one happy again. However, if one uses nostalgia in a way of comparison, for example, an elderly person in a nursing home looking back on their life and thinking that "those were the better times", this can create a cycle of pessimistic thinking and lead to an extended period of negative feeling. But, if this same elderly person instead chooses to look back and be nostalgic about their life and think "What has my life meant to me?", this can evoke positive feelings and make that person view their future in a better light. The same goes to everyone reading this. If you tend to look back at old times, and think about how life was "better back then", how do you ever expect for you to be happy in the future if you constantly think of the past as "being better"? If you are not already doing so, you must look back with a different attitude. A few ways to think could be "What can I learn from this?", or "How has this helped me?". If you change your way of thinking, you can change your life.

Nostalgia can be a healer, an old friend, and a mystery. Letting sentimental thinking happen is beneficial, and can make you feel happy. Let yourself look back in the past every now and then, and realize that what has happened back then cannot hold a candle to what will take place in the future.