Support NeoGAF

[DragoonKain]

Every once in a while I’ll be randomly hit with some nostalgia or a memory from my past. It’s not some big momentous event in my life. Just a totally random day from my life that doesn’t stand out significantly one way or another. Happened again to me earlier, it’s raining today and I was relaxing and I was just hit with a memory out of the blue when I was a kid and went to this sports cards store with my dad on the way home from a family get together.

Nostalgia and memories are said to be triggered by our senses. Smell is a big one, sound and music is also one. But weather for me has been a big one.

It makes me wonder if the brain is powerful enough to feel the temperature outside and the type of weather that is going on and find a day from your past where the weather was almost identical to it and bring it to the forefront of your mind in the form of nostalgia. I wouldn’t be surprised if that day it was also 64 degrees out and rainy and roughly the same time of the year. The brain can be that amazing,

I’ve been getting a lot of nostalgia lately, and the power of it always fascinates me. How just one smell, bout of rain, or song can spring a memory from my brain that has been totally lost and forgotten right to the top of my mind like that. Where under any other circumstance I’d never have recalled that memory again.

Does this happen to anyone else here?

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

DefinitelyZ

If something happens they reminds me of something from my younger years, something remember vividly, nostalgia washes over me. It’s like I’ll be in a different moment in time in my head, reliving it.

 

[Tesseract]

i don't like the feeling, always ends up sapping a bunch of energy outta me

the mad men scene with don illustrates why i don't like it, pensive sadness with no definite cause is a path to destruction

onward is the only path

 

[#Phonepunk#]

personal nostalgia is very underrated. nostalgia itself gets a bad wrap these days.

i think fondness for youth is one of the things that make use human. we kind of romanticize youth and being young, and we do so to our own lives. it is only natural that this bleeds out into pop culture. it's not really something we should fight imo.

as i get older, it is interesting to think of a memory, then ponder it and realize it happened 15 or 20 years ago. hearing an old record or seeing an old movie doesn't just remind me of the time i saw that movie. it reminds me of the TIME IN WHICH i saw that movie. so a flood of other memory start coming in, the house i used to live in, my great grandparents both still being alive, my brothers' soccer games, etc.

we all have one life to live and it is extremely precious. memories are one of the only records we have of our own existence and are equally precious. to me, nostalgia hints at life not being a series of events, but a continuous stream, wherein the same me that did X in the past is the same me contemplating it in the present. physically my body has changed and i might be composed entirely of new particles vs. myself decades ago, yet i know i am the same "person". when meditating you can sometimes find yourself in a soft third person out of body experience. "watching the watcher" so to speak. i think nostalgia is kind of similar to that.

at the same time, yeah, it takes you out of the present, and it's navel gazey. for a long time nostalgia was considered a form of mental illness.

 

[jshackles]

Nostalgia and memories are said to be triggered by our senses. Smell is a big one

This one fascinates me, personally.

When I was 19 years old, I developed complete anosmia (which means I lost the ability to smell). That was 20 years ago, so at this point in my life I've lived longer without a sense of smell than with. However my brain remembers what certain things smell like, or at least what I think they smell like. I can think of BBQ or a fart and my mind can conjure up memories of what I remember those things smelling like. It gets really weird when I encounter things I never smelled before losing the sense - because it's like my brain expects there to be a link and just... can't find one. Sometimes my brain uses fuzzy logic to piece things like this together: like before I was 19 I never smelled certain types of ocean fish such as sturgeon but I smelled a fresh caught sturgeon and my brain triggered a memory of bass fishing at a lake with my dad and somehow associated the two and my brain was tricked into thinking it smelled just like the other type of fish (when in reality - maybe it does? Or maybe not? No clue.)

The human brain is this incredibly weird and complex thing, it's kinda crazy to think about.

 

[DragoonKain]

This one fascinates me, personally.

When I was 19 years old, I developed complete anosmia (which means I lost the ability to smell). That was 20 years ago, so at this point in my life I've lived longer without a sense of smell than with. However my brain remembers what certain things smell like, or at least what I think they smell like. I can think of BBQ or a fart and my mind can conjure up memories of what I remember those things smelling like. It gets really weird when I encounter things I never smelled before losing the sense - because it's like my brain expects there to be a link and just... can't find one. Sometimes my brain uses fuzzy logic to piece things like this together: like before I was 19 I never smelled certain types of ocean fish such as sturgeon but I smelled a fresh caught sturgeon and my brain triggered a memory of bass fishing at a lake with my dad and somehow associated the two and my brain was tricked into thinking it smelled just like the other type of fish (when in reality - maybe it does? Or maybe not? No clue.)

The human brain is this incredibly weird and complex thing, it's kinda crazy to think about.

That’s really fascinating and also sorry to hear it as well, did some type of brain injury cause that or is it some type of genetic condition people get?

 

[jshackles]

That’s really fascinating and also sorry to hear it as well, did some type of brain injury cause that or is it some type of genetic condition people get?

In my case it was brain injury, but there are tons of things that can cause this (many of them genetic).

Loss of smell (anosmia) Causes

A stuffy nose is one cause of this symptom. Learn about other causes and when it might be serious.

www.mayoclinic.org

 

[DragoonKain]

That’s pretty wild. And I get the rabbit hole thing going on too, where once one memory is triggered, a wave of them come, and suddenly you’re overwhelmed by a bunch of memories both from that general time in your life, to memories related to whatever triggered it from different parts of your life. And it’s like you gotta focus on one at a time or you’ll be overcome with nostalgia.

 

[buizel]

Smells do it for me.

I smell something I havent smelt for years and it reminds me of 25 years ago on a beach or sitting with my cousins playing mario party on the n64 at the top of the stairs..

Theres a lady perfume that i cant find. I feel a lot of old ladies wear it, but it makes me nostalgic too.

 

[J-Roderton]

It’s a nice feeling.

 

[Tesseract]

it's nice in the moment, too often leads to rabbit holes that go nowhere

reminiscing is fun tho

 

[teezzy]

I'm definitely someone who focuses far too much on the past. It's a character flaw.

Makes me sad just thinking about it too much tbh.

 

[John Day]

This one fascinates me, personally.

When I was 19 years old, I developed complete anosmia (which means I lost the ability to smell). That was 20 years ago, so at this point in my life I've lived longer without a sense of smell than with. However my brain remembers what certain things smell like, or at least what I think they smell like. I can think of BBQ or a fart and my mind can conjure up memories of what I remember those things smelling like. It gets really weird when I encounter things I never smelled before losing the sense - because it's like my brain expects there to be a link and just... can't find one. Sometimes my brain uses fuzzy logic to piece things like this together: like before I was 19 I never smelled certain types of ocean fish such as sturgeon but I smelled a fresh caught sturgeon and my brain triggered a memory of bass fishing at a lake with my dad and somehow associated the two and my brain was tricked into thinking it smelled just like the other type of fish (when in reality - maybe it does? Or maybe not? No clue.)

The human brain is this incredibly weird and complex thing, it's kinda crazy to think about.

Fascinating. I’ve read that senses try to compensate for the lack of another, like how someone blind can develop better hearing.

This useful PC is trying to compensate. Amazing.