Anticipatory nostalgia: missing the present when it's not yet lost

Past lives, the what ifs, and all the versions of nostalgia at once

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In our house, there are two of us who are prone to nostalgia and two of us who are not. It isn’t without coincidence that the same two have an easier time living in the present than the two of us who often ruminate about the past and worry about the future.

There seems to be a correlation; I will let you guess which side of the line I fall.

I’ve always wondered why some people are more nostalgic than others. I connect the dots between sentimental longing, personality traits, and cognitive biases as I observe this particular divide in our household.

I was not raised by nostalgic parents. When I think about them escaping poverty and war, it makes sense; they inhabit that self-protective survivors’ mentality like armor that propels them to always look forward. If lived experiences and cultural influences are some of the factors that make one person more nostalgic over another, I’m not sure why I grew up to become such a sentimental, nostalgic-prone adult. If I didn’t have a child who ended up like me in this regard, I would have moved through life feeling greatly mismatched with the rest of my family.