Nostalgia

The human brain is an amazing thing - as are most things that I don't understand. Our five senses contribute so much to our knowledge of the world around us, yet in my case, I feel I don't pay attention to them enough.

Lately, I have had the strongest sense of nostalgia. I can close my eyes and think on a time where I remember how I felt, what the air was like, the lighting, the smell, and the feel of it. What's odd is that sometimes it happens for experiences I've never had, or I feel nostalgia for a dream world.

I feel a deep appreciation for my own memories and experiences. There are two amazing things though: I feel nostalgia for things I've never experienced, and I notice how strongly our other senses contribute to our memory of a thing, and how we never notice it until it's gone.

So firstly, what about all of this misplaced nostalgia? I'll venture a guess and say I'm at a point in my life where the paths ahead of me are narrowing. I had and still have plenty of dreams, but some things will not come to fruition. Perhaps those in their older age and nearer death feel something similar to this, though more potent. Is this what it is to age? Do I get an honorary badge of wisdom at some point?

this leads me into my second thought - the five senses. Today, when I went to work, I know what it looks like, what I should expect, and what I will be doing. But 3 years from now when I am hopefully further along in my career, I am going to have a completely different sense of the place, a sense of how I felt day to day, on an inner level, that I don't necessarily show while I'm there. I'm sure I'll gain some knowledge of this feeling, and perhaps wonder why I didn't feel it at the time. Some people say that hindsight is 20/20. I can't even begin to express how true that is for me.

Thomas Keller, the chef, serves his food with a small bite, for you to get a sense of what the food is, create a memory, and then allow it to fly away as fleetingly as it came. It's this kind of nostalgia I experience as well - to create a sense of nostalgia for something that you've created? Which I suppose means to create a memory, to create a nostalgia for something someone has never experienced, to create a world that someone has an inkling of, but has never experienced.