We typically think of nostalgia as an amiable ramble down memory lane. But it can bite hard and cut deep. Beware!
We all dream of the day when we revisit special places we have known, revived times that were happy and carefree, put our feet firmly back in a special, indeed sacred, place that, for us, was quite pivotal in our lives.
Well, take care! It rarely works, for one thing. And it can be quite heartbreaking for another. After all the word nostalgia means “painful homecoming” (algos is Latin for pain, hence an-algesia for painkillers!)
The word was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. It’s a medical condition! [Wikipedia]
Nostalgia is associated with a longing for the past, its personalities, possibilities, and events, usually described as the “good old days” or the “glory days”. There is a predisposition, caused by cognitive biases such as rosy retrospection, for people to view the past more positively and the future more negatively. When applied to one’s beliefs about a society or institution, this is called declinism, which has been described as “a trick of the mind” and as “an emotional strategy, something comforting to snuggle up to when the present day seems intolerably bleak”.¹
So yes, this is a health issue. It can be very disturbing, even hurtful, to try to go back in time and suppose that everything will be hunky-dory, just as it once was. You could end up disillusioned and the good times you were anchoring your present in might disappear forever.
It happened to me just recently. Vivien and I took a short break; I wanted to show her my old haunts in Andalucía in southern Spain, where I had lived for several years. Included was an intended visit to the Mezquite (mosque) in the city of Cordoba. I rate it as one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, even though the Christians had trashed it by building a cathedral right in the middle of it.
What remained was still glorious when I last saw it, nearly 30 years ago.
The Mezquita or mosque in Cordoba.
Anyway, let’s go back some. I washed up in Spain with a broken heart, after my first marriage ended. I moved abroad and that was the first time in my life I lived outside the UK. I licked my wounds and gradually recovered. I even dreamed we may one day be reconciled.
By a quirk of Fate I was living in a property that had once belonged to a famous movie director and Marilyn Monro had stayed there! It had been unoccupied and dilapidated for over 30 years and I tried to buy it but failed (I was skint after the first marriage broke up). I mention it only because there was wild mountain thyme growing all over the property and I LOVE the song Wild Mountain Thyme (aka. Will Ye Go Lassie, Go?”). There is one line in the song that literally saved my soul: “If my true love should leave me, I will surely find another…”
It’s a lovely song. And I did find another; my lovely Vivien! See, even heartache has a purpose. It’s to get you through to the next glorious bit of your life!
If you want to hear the song it’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uCDw30wCe0 It’s a man’s song, not a woman’s, but Ella sings it beautifully and not like a funeral dirge, which is way it’s often sung!
So I was there for some three years and met a beautiful young Belgian girl half my age nicknamed Telly. Her really name was Machtelt (Matilda) and she was surely an angel in disguise. She restored all my belief in humanity, music, magic, spirit and—I’m so grateful—in myself.
We toured all over Andalucia, from Seville and Tarifa in the west, Granada in the east, and as I mentioned, Cordoba where we saw the exquisitely beautiful Mesquite (mosque).
Telly spoke five languages (she was in Spain to brush up her Spanish). She loved politics and was very ambitious. She used to tease me with the prospect I might have bedded the first woman President of Europe!
I begged her beware of politics. “It will break your heart,” I told her. But she was young, delighted in life and wanted to wake up the whole world to good things.
So… back to nostalgia. It was with some trepidation that I finally returned to Spain; the first time since I had left some twenty seven years earlier. We flew from Bordeaux to Madrid, picked up a car and drove off into the Andalucian sunset!
The first big disappointment was that we could not get to see the Alhambra in Granada. It was necessary to buy tickets months in advance and we did not know that. The world today is suffering from a condition called “over-tourism”, or “tourist saturation”, where there are massive queues and inordinate numbers to see the classic tourist sites.
Never mind, we had a nice tapas supper and wine, that was authentic for Viv!
Next day we drove on to Fuengirola, a nice 4-star hotel called the Leonardo. This was the town near where I’d lived for most of my time in Spain.
But it was changed… and not for the better. I tried to show Viv where I’d been walking with a tall beautiful blonde and somebody shouted “Hiya Sean!” It took me half a minute to realize I was being mistaken for Sean Connery. He lived nearby and I was often mistaken for him at that time (no, really!)
What do you do? It was a lot of trouble to walk over to the admirer and explain I was not the famous film star. So I gave him my best wave and walked on. Well, no lies told, and it probably made his day, to have James Bond wave to him!
But I couldn’t find the street! It was totally built up around about with concrete high rises. In fact it was trouble enough to even find the place where I had once lived. That property and all the mountain thyme too, presumably, had been built over with houses and apartments.
And that was the story for the rest of the trip, sadly. Concrete EVERYWHERE.
Here’s the “before and after:
Fuengirola old and new
By this stage I was a bit mopey. Not sad for myself but sad for Viv’s experience. I wasn’t able to share my old haunts with her, which was the whole reason for the trip. There was nothing left. It was indeed the pain of homecoming!
Never mind, I thought. I’ll take her to see a feria; that’s an Andalucian horse fair. It’s great to see ladies dressed in traditional costume, all flounces and frills, and the men (caballeros) so elegant on their beautiful horses.
Feria. It’s a festival on horseback, in effect.
The only timely feria was in Jerez (where sherry comes from). We drove 2½ hours and we saw NOTHING! It poured and poured with rain, the feria stadium was MUD and in any case the feria did not start till the evening on day one, the day we were there. Tourism websites just slightly omitted to mention that. We had to leave before evening, for the long wet drive back.
Never mind, there was always going to be the Mezquite. But no… We did get tickets but, talk about “overtourism”! There were queues and queues and queues and there was no chance to sink into what I remember as the deep tranquil silence. Boohoo!
Next day we had to start back towards Madrid. Are you getting this; that the trip was a disaster!
So don’t say I didn’t warn you about nostalgia. It can be a real pain! But analgesics won’t help.
Haha!
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor
Reference:
- Lewis, Jemima (January 16, 2016). “Why we yearn for the good old days”. The Telegraph. Retrieved 20 December 2016
