When you were younger, you wanted to be older, right? You wanted to grow up as soon as possible into this adult who could drink and date whoever they wanted. But then, that stage of your life comes, it’s here and it’s now, and you can’t help but think, why did I wish my life away? Those childhood memories are just that, memories, and you are no longer that youthful child who was filled with such joy and happiness, who saw the world as an innocent globe full of dreams. Your parents are your own inner version of god, and pick’n’mix sweets at Woolworths were what got you through your long days at school. You no longer fall asleep on the sofa and be picked up by your mum and tucked into bed ever so delicately… that’s if you’re not hideously drunk and your “mum” if your weirdly strong flatmate who rather than delicately, kind of throws you onto your bed. The thought of university was huge, you couldn’t ever imagine being that old and in such high education when you’re barely revising for your SAT exams. And every weekend you would go and knock on your best friends’ door and ask if “they want to come out”, because phones were non-existent then, you would really communicate to one another in person, your world didn’t know the online spiral just yet. It was innocent, and you never really understood it until you were older, and wishing life was just as easy now as it was then.
But now you're 21 and standing in the kitchen of your apartment making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You're just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up the parcel from the local depot. And also more exciting things like books you're reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don't feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but "mum's" probably wouldn't feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realise that you'll never be this young again but this is the first time you've ever been this old. When you can't remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee's done. You're going to breathe in and out. You're going to be fine in about five minutes.
So why do we do it? Why are we so nostalgic? Nostalgia doesn’t just exist through memories. It exists through photographs, clothing, smells, even re-watching television shows and movies and #throwbackthursdays. You know how the movie is going to end, but you can’t help to just watch it “for old times”. Or perhaps you’ll post a photo on Instagram of a vintage t-shirt you found at a charity shop, and caption it with the memory it reminds you of. Then maybe you’ll click on a link, sold to you by a digital news site on Facebook, with a headline that reads something like: ‘The Friends Reunion Is Definitely Happening.’
How many hours do you think you’ve spent scrolling through your old Facebook photos, or going to the beginning of you Instagram? Even Facebook and Instagram create a “on this day” creating a huge nostalgic machine. It encourages you to look back on your life through photos, at the terrible sleepover selfies you would take when you were younger, or the awkward holiday photos your mum would take of you with your extra tanned nose and forehead. Or remind you of your exes, and all the people you used to know and love, the people who are now strangers and you forgot you even knew them.
Millennials is a concept in which young adults are proud to be associated with, and yet nostalgia reigns in popular culture.
Every film feels like a remake – last year there was a new Star Wars film which, perhaps deliberately, held onto it’s decidedly 70s aesthetic. It also extends to the clothes we wear, from the proliferation of 90s fashion on the high street at Topshop, Urban Outfitters and Asos to the higher end with emerging designers like Londoner Caitlin Price, who has cited drum and bass raves and 90s club wear as their inspiration, or Marques Almeida, who reference 90s grunge in their sell out collections.
Clothing always makes a comeback, though bar the 70’s, lets just forget that ever existed. But if you were to walk down the street and really observe the peoples clothing, you will see that the 90’s has been rebirthed. Adidas originals and streetwear fashion that emulates the 90s oh-so-very obviously.
There are different types of nostalgia. You can reject the past, selectively pick what was good and take it into the future with you or you can linger, looking longingly at something that was and is no more, as a way to distract yourself from the uncertainty of the present and unknowability of the future.
A bit of sentimentality never hurt anyone but we should beware of looking to the past too much. We must engage with the present. The 00s and the 90s changed culture forever, that’s what’s so appealing about those two decades. Listen to Garage until you’re sick of it, gorge on re-ups of archive Spice Girls images and watch vintage episodes of The Simple Life until you empathise with Paris Hilton – but – don’t forget to put time aside think about what you want this decade - the decade with no name - to go down in history for.
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